A new bill filed in the North Carolina House of Representatives aims to ban children under the age of 14 from entering social media and verifying certain locations, but unlike other age-verified laws.
According to reports from WFMY News 2, North Carolina, HB 301 is known as the Minors Act social media protection measures and passed the first reading.
Is the age verification law valid? Not according to this study.
Similar to Australia’s social media ban on children under 16, the bill would prohibit anyone under 14 from creating an account on social platforms that meet certain criteria (e.g., 10% of active users daily and “addiction” features such as Unlimited Scroll). Children aged 14 to 15 need permission from their parents to establish an account, although it does not specify how to deal with this consent.
Mix after dark
Additionally, HB 301 requires “anonymous” or standard age verification when viewing content with a large number of parts (more than one-third) and is considered “harmful to minors”. The term “harmful to minors” returns to the Supreme Court case, Ginsburg v. New YorkThis concluded that non-obscene content (and thus protected by the First Amendment) remains “harmful to minors”.
Often, in age verification laws, this means clear content. This part complies with other such laws that require some form of age verification (such as a digital ID or a facial scan) to access porn sites.
Unlike other age verification laws passed in the United States, including North Carolina’s own age verification laws, the law requires these on-site visitors to be over 16 years old, rather than 18 years old. In North Carolina, the age of consent is 16 years old.
In January, the Supreme Court heard the age verification law in the case Free Speech Alliance v. Paxtontheir ruling may be filed this summer. A recent study on age verification laws shows that these laws are not working in their proposed purpose to keep minors away from clear websites. This is because they can access websites that are not in compliance with the law, or they can use a VPN to work around them.
