Will Iowa follow Utah? Bill would restrict teen access to social media

Days after Utah became the first state to enact laws limiting how children can use social media, Iowa Republican House lawmakers said they plan to pursue a similar measure that would require parental consent before children under the age of 18 can sign up to use sites like TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat and Facebook.

House File 526, as introduced by Rep. Henry Stone, a Republican from Forest City, would ban anyone under the age of 18 from having their own social media account. Social media companies that operate in the state would be fined $1,000 per violation, and the proposal directs the Iowa Attorney General’s Office to enforce provisions of the bill.

While the bill proposes an all-out ban of children on social media, Republicans who advanced it in a subcommittee meeting Thursday said they would amend it to give kids access to social media if their parents allow it.

The bill defines “social media company” to mean a company responsible for operating and maintaining a social media internet site that allows users to provide information about themselves to specified audiences and communicate with other users.

Representatives for social media and technology companies — including Google, Facebook, Instagram, Microsoft and Amazon.com — and education groups raised concerns that the bill as written is overly broad, and would also apply to e-commerce and job-posting sites like LinkedIn, as well as learning platforms like Google Classroom, Microsoft Teams and Canvas that are used to create and share files between teachers and students and grade assignments.

Rep. John Wills, a Republican from Spirit Lake and chairman of the subcommittee, said he intends to amend the bill to prohibit companies from collecting data on children under the age of 18 without parental consent.

Companies are already prohibited from collecting data on children under the age of 13 without parental consent under the federal Children's Online Privacy Protection Act. That includes providing information required to create a profile, meaning social media companies already ban kids under 13 from signing up to their platforms — but children can easily get around the prohibition, with or without their parents' consent.

The regulations come as parents and lawmakers in Iowa and other states grow increasingly concerned about teenagers' use of platforms like TikTok, Instagram and others and their effect on young people’s mental health.

Other GOP-led states are pursuing similar proposals. California, meanwhile, enacted a law last year barring tech companies from profiling children or using personal information in ways that could harm children physically or mentally. In addition to parental consent, social media companies would likely have to design new features to comply with parts of the law to prohibit promoting ads to minors and showing them in search results, NPR reported.

Tim Coonan, representing the Technology Association of Iowa, said states are stepping up to tackle the issue due to federal inaction.

“Congress is just not able to pull together a consensus and get a bill on the President’s desk that he can sign,” he said. “ … This is an example of frustration of an issue that we all agree is an ongoing problem.”

Coonan and representatives of the big tech companies worry about unintended consequences. And he questioned how the state would enforce the proposed regulations.

“I’m just not sure how functionally you move forward on an issue like this,” he told lawmakers. “Certainly understand the concern, and from an industry perspective the last thing we want is to expose kids to dangerous or inappropriate content.”

Tools exist to monitor kids’ online activity

Representatives for Google and Meta Platforms Inc., the parent company to Instagram and Facebook, said the companies already provide tools and practices that address privacy concerns for younger uses.

“So, for example, we have safe search on Google. We have screen limits through Chromebooks,” said Matt McKinney, representing Google and its affiliates. “We restrict access, or allow the ability to restrict access, … to specific websites,” as well as disabling autoplay for videos and providing break reminders and certain communication restrictions.

“There’s a lot of different protections out there,” McKinney told lawmakers. “And all of those are enabled by allowing accounts to exist. If accounts don’t exist, then those tools would be compromised.”

Rep. Elizabeth Wilson, D-Marion, echoed the concern.

“There’s a lot of tools out there to guide what your kids have access to,” Wilson said, noting she’s guardian to an adult brother with special needs. “And I liked the fact that when I employed those tools, I then know where he’s going. I agree it gives me access to what he’s looking at.”

Fellow subcommittee member Rep. Phil Thompson, a Republican from Boone, said while not “particularly excited by the bill” that he called “a little heavy-handed,” he noted “compelling data” from studies that have shown that time spent on social media correlates to poor mental health outcomes for children.

“We’re seeing child depression increase. I think there is a lot of strong correlations there,” Thompson said.

Both he and Wills — while noting the definition of a social media platform needs to be addressed — voted to advance the bill to the full House Ways & Means Committee for consideration, exempting it from Friday’s legislative funnel deadline.

Wilson did not sign off on the bill.

Asked about the bill, House Speaker Pat Grassley, R-New Hartford, said “it is a conversation I feel we need to have” centered on collecting data on children and children’s mental health.

Democrats decry ‘blanket ban’

House Minority Leader Jennifer Konfrst, D-Windsor Heights, said if Republicans “really want to let parents parent their own children, they will let parents monitor and control kids’ social media use.”

“We can all be better about social media use,” Konfrst said. “Social media can be a toxic environment. … Of course, kids need to be careful with social media. Let’s not also forget that social media can be a place of community, where kids find each other in a way that can be valuable and meaningful to them.”

But Republicans are uninterested in having a nuanced conversation on the topic that explores the role social media plays, Konfrst told reporters Thursday.

Senate Minority Leader Zach Wahls, D-Coralville, said the idea “of a blanket ban is nonsensical.”

Instead, Wahls said he would like to see a nonpartisan way to evaluate the issue, such as an interim committee that consults public health experts and social media executives “to actually talk about it in a respectful way.”

The Gazette’s Erin Murphy contributed reporting

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