Utah Bans Social Media for Youth Under 18

Governor Spencer Cox (R) of Utah has signed a bill into law banning social media platforms, including TikTok, Facebook, and Instagram, for youth under the age of 18 without parental consent.

“We’re no longer willing to let social media companies continue to harm the mental health of our youth,” Cox wrote on Twitter of the new law.

The platforms now must restrict youth users from 10:30pm until 6:30am. The only way around the restrictions is for parents to override the apps’ settings.

The law won’t take effect until March 2024 and Utah has yet to announce how the new restrictions will be enforced.

Utah is the first state to put in place such bans, but it’s not the first state to consider them. Arkansas, Connecticut, Ohio, and Texas have recently introduced similar bills.

According to researchers from the Mayo Clinic, “Social media use can also negatively affect teens, distracting them, disrupting their sleep, and exposing them to bullying, rumor spreading, unrealistic views of other people's lives and peer pressure.”

Another survey from 2016 reported “teens found that greater social media use, nighttime social media use and emotional investment in social media…were each linked with worse sleep quality and higher levels of anxiety and depression.”

What do you think of this new law? Should more states consider such restrictions?