California’s “Addictive Feeds” Law Violates Teens’ First Amendment Rights
A California law that prohibits teens from receiving recommended social media content from other social media users violates their First Amendment rights, EFF argued this week. The case, Meta v. Bonta , challenges SB 976 , which requires that teen social media users get their parents’ permission before seeing other users’ recommended speech on their social media feeds. The legal challenge to SB…
A California law requiring teens to obtain parental permission before accessing recommended social media content infringes on their First Amendment rights, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) contends. The legal dispute, Meta v. Bonta, challenges Senate Bill 976 (SB 976) which mandates parental consent for teens to view other users' recommendations on social media feeds.
While the focus of the legal challenge has primarily been on the law's impact on social media platforms' First Amendment rights to curate user-generated content, a friend-of-the-court brief filed by the EFF alongside the Center for Democracy & Technology and the Wikimedia Foundation asserts that the law also violates the First Amendment rights of teen users.
The brief asserts that SB 976 hinders young people's ability to fully utilize the internet, prohibiting them from disseminating their speech and interacting with other users' speech. Recommendation algorithms on social media serve a dual purpose: they aid users in discovering content by other users and help users' own speech reach a wider audience.
SB 976, according to the brief, imposes substantial, constitutionally problematic burdens on young users' ability to read, comment on news, discuss politics, find and share art, express their religious beliefs, or even practice their faith. Due to the overwhelming amount of content on these platforms, it can be challenging for users, especially young ones, to manually sift through and find relevant content.
The EFF's brief argues that while the First Amendment does not prevent California and other states from enacting laws to protect users from harmful surveillance practices by major social media services, the law should be invalidated on First Amendment grounds because it imposes broad burdens on teens' ability to distribute and receive speech.
The brief suggests that a more narrowly tailored law could help protect all internet users, including minors, without infringing on their First Amendment rights.
Written by urgent.news from EFF Deeplinks's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
