Minnesota's push to curb social media harms for kids faces steep hurdles

MINNEAPOLIS - If Minnesota lawmakers have their way, children 15 and under would need parental permission to have social media accounts, and the features available to them would be sharply limited.

A bill limiting youth access to social media sites won broad support from both parties, but its fate is uncertain. Gov. Tim Walz has not yet committed to signing it as similar efforts in other states have faced significant court challenges.

A Walz spokesman said Thursday night the governor was still reviewing details of the bill, which establishes parental consent, age verification and bans specific "addictive" features.

The law would likely face a legal challenge from privacy advocates and Big Tech backers. Other states have tried to institute new age-verification measures, or encourage online companies to explore them, but most have been blocked by litigation and lobbying.

Some states have won initial legal battles to overcome temporary injunctions while the longer-term legal battles grind on. Federal appellate courts last year allowed Florida and Mississippi to begin enforcement of their respective age-verification social media laws while legal challenges worked through the courts.

Minnesota lawmakers were motivated by advocates who say the sites can enable cyberbullying and crime, driving up risks of "sextortion" and teen suicide, among other problems.

The bill requires parental consent for Minnesota kids under 16 to have a social media account. Even with that, they would still lose access to features like infinite scrolling and automatic video replay that lawmakers have said are addictive or potentially dangerous. The law would take effect in July 2027.

In Wisconsin, a bipartisan group of lawmakers sent an age-verification law to Gov. Tony Evers, who vetoed it last month, on grounds of privacy intrusion for the state's residents.

NetChoice, the powerful trade group representing large social media sites like TikTok, Instagram and Facebook, is asking Walz to veto the Minnesota bill that lawmakers passed by a wide margin this month.

The law also intends to reduce the amount of data collected about children. Amy Bos, a policy director at NetChoice, argues the Minnesota law could effectively require companies to collect more personal information in order to verify users' eligibility for social media accounts.

She said Minnesota's approach mirrors attempts elsewhere that have been halted over potential free-speech concerns.

"This isn't new legal ground," she said. "So I think it's fair to say we know where this is going to go."

The push to regulate Big Tech comes amid growing concern about online harms, especially among young people. Minnesota also passed a social media warning-label law, though it is tied up in courts.

Since last year, a new wave of states is attempting to regulate or ban social media platform use among young people, said Rin Alajaji of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which opposes the efforts.

Privacy advocates fear such rules are walking toward a government ID requirement in order to use social media, which could limit free speech and access to information online. Alajaji said it also presents an opportunity for personal information to leak via data breaches.

"When you're doing things like facial recognition, for example, you cannot really get a new face," she said.

Age-verification technologies are imperfect. Using tricks like drawing fake facial hair on their faces, children in the United Kingdom frequently fooled artificial-intelligence software designed to estimate age through a webcam, according to a study published this month by the U.K.-based nonprofit Internet Matters.

As governments move to ban or limit minors' access, some social media companies are enacting their own restrictions. Meta, which runs Facebook and Instagram, recently launched an initiative to delete accounts for children under 13 and place other minors in its specialized "Teen Account." The initiative includes Facebook users in the U.S., where regulations lack consistency.

The Supreme Court's 1997 decision in Reno v. ACLU, which challenged the federal Communications Decency Act, could be relevant to these laws. The court struck down that act, finding the government's vague ban of indecent communications to minors sent over the internet would violate the First Amendment.

Based on that standard, courts have continued to hold that First Amendment rights cannot be compromised just for the sake of protecting kids, said William McGeveran, dean of the University of Minnesota Law School.

"If age-verification rules cause real strict obstacles for adults to get access, then they can be struck down," he said.

Regardless of a potential court challenge, nearly every Minnesota lawmaker supported it. It cleared the Senate without opposition and received just two no-votes in the House.

Rep. Peggy Scott, a Republican, who sponsored the bill, said lawmakers are easily finding common ground to address widespread concerns about online predators and the deteriorating condition of mental health among young people. She highlighted "sextortion" and teen suicide among the risks.

Scott acknowledged a legal challenge to Minnesota's law may be likely.

"Big Tech doesn't like this. They are monetizing our kids to (the tune of) about $11 billion," Scott said. "And so I won't be surprised if they do challenge it."

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This story was originally published May 22, 2026 at 8:01 PM.