NetChoice Challenges Virginia’s One-Hour Social Media Usage Rule for Minors
NetChoice, a coalition of tech companies including Meta, Google, Amazon, Reddit, and Discord, is suing Virginia to block its new legislation that limits children under 16 to one hour of daily social media use without parental approval. The lawsuit argues that the law violates the First Amendment by restricting minors’ access to lawful and valuable online speech. NetChoice claims that the regulation imposes privacy risks through mandatory age-verification processes, citing concerns that platforms could be required to verify users’ ages through more intrusive methods like government ID checks.
Virginia’s incoming law, Senate Bill 854, mandates that social media platforms use ‘commercially reasonable methods’ to verify user ages. This provision, according to NetChoice, could lead to practices that extend beyond the initial requirement of prompting users to enter their birth date. The coalition cites a post from Governor Glenn Youngkin on X, in which he stated that platforms must verify age, which could imply a potential for stricter age-verification protocols. NetChoice argues that such measures would infringe on the rights of minors to access speech and could expose users to increased privacy and security risks.
Paul Taske, co-director of NetChoice’s Litigation Center, has emphasized that the First Amendment prohibits the government from placing restrictions on accessing lawful and valuable speech. He stated,