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Abstract

A growing number of states have recently enacted new laws with the goal of protecting young people from potential harm allegedly caused by social media use. These laws are diverse in their approaches but broadly seek to limit youth access to social media platforms by imposing age verification and parental consent requirements. These laws directly implicate the First Amendment rights of both young users who will no longer be able to access speech or speak on social media platforms as well as adult users who must now submit to age verification to access these quintessential forums for political discourse.

These new social media age verification laws are just one part of a larger trend of new laws aimed at “childproofing” the internet. Apart from social media, numerous states have recently enacted laws requiring pornographic websites to age authenticate users and to only allow users over the age of 18 to access pornographic material. Parallel to these legislative developments, the Supreme Court’s June 2025 decision in Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton has reshaped online age verification jurisprudence by upholding an online age verification law against a First Amendment challenge for the first time.

This Article contributes to the literature by first describing the many ways in which states are attempting to regulate youth social media usage. It then examines the critical differences between pornographic websites and social media platforms. Through examination of these differences, it becomes clear that the Court’s rationale in Free Speech Coalition is inapposite to the social media context. Social media age verification statutes intrude on significantly more speech, including core political speech, and impose more burdensome restrictions on both adult and youth users than do laws governing access to pornographic websites. Recognizing that statutorily age-gating social media platforms is problematic from both a constitutional and practical perspective, this Article argues that policy makers would better serve the public by instead allocating resources for further research on the impacts of social media use on young users and by empowering young social media users and their parents through education on the potential harms of youth social media use and the tools already available to parents to mitigate those harms.

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