The Massachusetts State Senate unveiled legislation Thursday to restrict social media use for minors, requiring social media companies to disable features deemed addictive or negative for young peoples mental health.
The bill (S.3164) avoids one controversial element present in proposals put forward in April by Governor Maura Healey and the state’s House of Representatives: a requirement for social media companies to use age verification technology.
Critics have pushed back against those proposals, arguing that requirements to submit government-issued identification or other personal information would be a major privacy and constitutional rights issue.
Evan Greer, director of Fight for the Future, a Boston-based nonprofit digital rights advocacy group, joined Morning Edition to discuss.
this transcript has been edited for clarity.
TORI BEDFORD: Let’s talk about this legislation released by the Senate... it’s the latest development on this ongoing back and forth about how to protect kids on social media... importantly, the Senate bill doesn’t require companies to verify users ages — but the legislation directs the state Attorney General’s office to make their own regulations specifying HOW a persons age can be verified. Can you explain how that’s different from previously proposed legislation?
EVAN GREER:
Yeah, absolutely. So I really think you see kind of the fingerprints of the public of Massachusetts on this Senate bill. And, you know, maybe we should take a moment to pat ourselves on the back that democracy still works a little bit here in the state, because the public backlash to the House bill and the Governor’s bill was loud and overwhelming.
The reality is that nobody wants to upload their government ID or hand more sensitive information over to these companies that already collect so much data on all of us. And so where the Senate bill differs significantly is: rather than forcing social media companies to find out the age of every single user, they just force social media companies to turn off some of these harmful features like autoplay, infinite scroll, and surveillance-driven algorithmic recommendations for all users. And then if you want to go turn them on, you can choose to verify your age. And so that is a very different approach.
I will say from a civil liberties and human rights perspective, there definitely are still some sticking points and issues in the Senate proposal that will need to be addressed through amendments. But it is, you know, in a significantly different place than the proposals that we saw from the governor and the House.
I really think that that is thanks to, I mean, even just through our campaign tools here at Fight for the Future, thousands of Massachusetts residents have called and emailed the State House about this issue. It is clearly something that has struck a nerve. And I think we are seeing the Senate respond to that feedback from the public and kind of try to thread the needle here on an issue that is very complicated, and very important to get right.
TORI: Why is this specifically a concern or especially dangerous for members of the LGBTQ+ community?
EVAN: Fight for the Future is part of a much broader coalition of more than 50 organizations who have been working on this in the state, including many organizations that represent trans and queer folks. And, you know, some of your listeners probably know me and know that I’m also a trans person active here in the state’s LGBTQ community.
The reality is that queer and trans people have always been early adopters of technology. We often find safety and community online when we can’t find it offline, either because you’re a young trans person with unsupportive parents, or you’re living in a rural area and don’t have access to suicide prevention resources, mental health resources, or even just community and friends. And so, you know, online spaces have been really important for queer and trans people. And when you erect barriers to accessing those spaces, like being forced to upload a government ID or get your face scanned, that can actually cut young people off from access to life-saving resources. And we’ve seen, for example, the Surgeon General report back when we had a useful Surgeon General that looked at social media use among teenagers did find some significant harms to overuse among teenagers, but it also showed that when you cut LGBTQ teenagers off from social media, they actually experience worse mental health outcomes.
We also just have to look at this in the context of the overall moment that we’re in. The Trump Administration is making lists of trans people. They are subpoenaing our medical records. Anything that subjects our community to more surveillance makes us less safe in this moment. And that’s not just true for trans folks, that’s true for all kinds of vulnerable communities. Communities who could be targeted by this administration or the next one.
[TORI] While all of this is going on, there’s another related issue being taken up on Beacon Hill: The House and Senate appointed a six-member conference to reconcile differences on their respective data privacy bills, the first meeting of that conference committee will be Tuesday, July 7th. What’s going on there?
EVAN: From our perspective of human rights advocates, this is actually a much better approach to addressing the very real the harm that big tech social media companies are doing, not just to our kids, but to our democracy, to the journalism industry, to, you know, kind of the fabric of our information ecosystem. What these bills would do is just limit the amount of data that these companies can collect on all of us in the first place.
There’s some differences between the House bill and the Senate bill that need to be worked out in conference, but overall, privacy activists, free-speech activists, civil liberties activists believe that these— this type of legislation that actually just cuts down on these companies’ surveillance empires, will do a lot more to protect kids. We’ll do a lot more to protect our democracy. And we’ll actually do a lot more to strike at the heart of the core ways that these companies are harming our society. So we’re excited that the Massachusetts legislature has taken up this privacy issue. And I hope that these kind of remain in conversation with each other because the reality is that while there is a lot of concern about these companies, it’s really important that we’re thoughtful about the policies that we put in place. We need policies that don’t just protect kids online, but also ensure that kids still have a voice in our society. We need the Greta Thunbergs of the future to be able to go viral and shape the world that they live in, not just live in kind of a bubble inside of it. And so, you know, I think we need to remember that young people need to have a voice and need to be empowered and not just protected.
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