As Utah’s children head back to school, the social media platforms they use to connect with friends have another deadline looming: They have until Oct. 1 to make sweeping changes to their websites to rein in kids’ use of their services — and, lawmakers say, limit social media’s negative mental health consequences — or face thousands of dollars in fines.
But those companies and free speech advocates contend the already-delayed law should be blocked because of it infringes on First Amendment rights. On Wednesday a federal judge spent nearly four hours hearing arguments as to why he should — or shouldn’t — prevent the new standards from taking effect.
The law, which is the Utah Legislature’s second swing at limiting youth social media use, requires social media companies to verify every users’ age and implement default privacy settings for anyone under 18 years that both restricts their account’s visibility and controls what personal data the company can collect. Those settings can only be changed with parental consent.
The platforms also must disable “features that prolong user engagement” for that account, like autoplay and those that encourage continuous scrolling.
The two plaintiffs taking aim at the law are NetChoice — a conglomerate of online businesses, including internet giants like X and the parent companies for Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat — and Utahn Hannah Zoulek who, as a 16-year-old in 2023, testified to lawmakers that restricting young people’s ability to learn to navigate social media themselves “endanger[s] us more than you could possibly imagine.”
Before Wednesday, lawyers for both sides had only met virtually, and as counsel for the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression shook the hand of one of the state’s attorneys, he remarked, “It’s a different world we live in.”
Steven Lehotsky, an attorney representing NetChoice, told U.S. District Judge Robert Shelby that the First Amendment doesn’t have an age limit and that curtailing who can see a young person’s post on social media quashes their voice.
He cited climate activist Greta Thunberg, who began advocating for environmental stewardship online at 15 years old.
“There is speech from minors in Utah who are like that, who have something important to say,” Lehotsky said, adding that interpreting speech rights to be restricted based on age would open the door to barring youth political speech in other contexts.
Shelby questioned whether the law could impact a high school athlete who aspires to be recruited to play college sports, so they post highlight reels online.
“What if the parents don’t want the athlete to play college football? That speech is prohibited under this law, is it not?” Shelby asked. “If you’re a climate activist and you’re 16 years old, you can’t use the internet as a platform.”
Lance Sorenson, who argued for the state, pointed to other online forums available for free expression, like setting up a website. But Shelby seemed unsatisfied. He referenced social media use by presidents and presidential candidates, and noted that social media platforms enable users to reach a large audience.
The state limiting who has the ability to spread messages on those platforms, Shelby said, “is a meaningful restraint on speech, is it not?”
Sorensen compared parental permission to use social media to a minor needing permission to get a tattoo — which some case law recognizes as a form of protected speech.
Shelby said that, to enforce the law, the state would need a “pretty robust causal relationship” between social media use and mental health harms — and expressed doubts the state had met that burden.
In passing the social media regulations, Spanish Fork Republican Sen. Mike McKell and South Jordan Republican Rep. Jordan Teuscher cited a 2023 advisory from the Surgeon General and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention about social media’s impact on youth mental health. That advisory concluded social media use may be detrimental for some teens, but did not establish a causal link between the two.
The challenge to the state’s social media restrictions come as Jordan School District leads a multi-district lawsuit against major social media companies after several students died by suicide at one high school during the 2017-18 academic year.
“You see on an individual basis how their lives are negatively impacted,” Superintendent Anthony Godfrey said at a July news conference. “It’s very emotional for me to think about the long-term impact of a student missing out on educational and social opportunities because of their connection with and obsession over social media.”
Shelby also expressed concern that the Utah Division of Consumer Protection hasn’t set rules as to how social media companies should follow the law or how it should be enforced.
Shelby has to make his decision on whether the law should be enforced before the Oct. 1 enactment date and said he is “mindful of the timeline.” Regardless of his ruling, he said, an appeal is likely.
“The bottom line is we’re seeing some major issues among minors, and something needs to be done,” said Teuscher, who who was one of about a half dozen people present for Wednesday’s hearing.
A second Utah law he sponsored that passed this year, which allows minors to sue social media companies for mental health problems they experience that tie back to the platforms, is not being challenged in court. Teuscher said that if Shelby rules against the state, Utahns could still push back against social media companies themselves.
“We may get to the same effect, even if there is an objection here, because the social media companies don’t want the liability,” Teuscher said.
