How and Why to Fight Back Against Social Media Bans | Electronic Frontier Foundation

Skip to main content

AboutContact

Press

People

Opportunities

IssuesFree Speech

Privacy

Creativity and Innovation

Transparency

International

Security

Our WorkDeeplinks Blog

Press Releases

Events

Legal Cases

Whitepapers

Podcast

Annual Reports

Take ActionAction Center

Electronic Frontier Alliance

Volunteer

ToolsPrivacy Badger

Surveillance Self-Defense

Certbot

Atlas of Surveillance

Cover Your Tracks

Street Level Surveillance

apkeep

DonateDonate to EFF

Giving Societies

Shop

Sponsorships

Other Ways to Give

Membership FAQ

DonateDonate to EFF

Shop

Other Ways to Give

Email updates on news, actions,

and events in your area.

Join EFF Lists

Copyright (CC BY)

Trademark

Privacy Policy

Thanks

Electronic Frontier Foundation

Donate

If you use technology, this fight is yours.Donate today

How and Why to Fight Back Against Social Media Bans

DEEPLINKS BLOG

By Molly Buckley<br>June 9, 2026

How and Why to Fight Back Against Social Media Bans

Share It

Share on Mastodon<br>Share on Bluesky<br>Share on Facebook<br>Copy link

Several U.S. states are pushing to ban young people from social media entirely. This marks the latest wave of censorship bills masquerading as “children’s online safety” measures, with states like Massachusetts, Idaho, Minnesota, North Carolina, South Carolina, Illinois, and EFF’s home state of California leading the charge.

Just a few years ago, lawmakers supporting age-gating laws insisted their efforts were narrowly targeted at limiting young people’s access to adult content. At the time, we warned that they would not stop there: once the government established the authority and built the infrastructure to collect and “verify” massive troves of user data, it would inevitably sweep broader and broader categories of lawful speech into this mass surveillance and censorship system.

Unfortunately, our predictions came true. As legislators across the country advance proposals that would block all young people from accessing the “modern public square,” the Overton window has shifted dramatically towards mass censorship—and the speed of this shift should concern all of us.

This primer breaks down this dangerous wave of social media bans: how they work (and why they don’t), who they harm, and how we can fight back.

How to Spot a Social Media Ban

The details of these bills vary from state to state. Some (like California’s AB 1709) are a flat-out social media ban for all young people under a certain age, while other states (like South Carolina and Minnesota) allow access to young users who hand over even more data to show verifiable parental consent. Many bills regulate certain social media features, too, including by setting default privacy settings, time limits, or notification preferences for all accounts that fail the age-gate.

As for the age-gating mechanism itself, most proposals fall into two broad categories: age verification bills and behavioral age estimation bills.

Age Verification Bills require online services to collect highly sensitive data, including government ID and biometric information, from all users before either restricting or allowing them access.

For example, take California’s social media ban (AB 1709). Starting in January 2027, operating systems will be required to collect enough information from users to sort them into age groups, or “brackets.” Under AB 1709, social media apps would then use that age bracket information to completely block anyone under 16, while supposedly letting everyone else through. By contrast, Florida’s law (HB 3) takes a more aggressive route by forcing platforms to verify users' identities directly, usually by contracting with private third-party companies to perform verification services.

Behavioral Age Estimation Bills , on the other hand, are a more recent innovation of states like Minnesota (HF 1438) and South Carolina (H 4591). These bills require platforms to estimate the ages of users based largely on data that they already collect, including self-attested age, behavioral information, and account history and activity. In practice, these bills enable tech companies to use algorithms and/or AI to analyze our online behavior and estimate age based on that.

Proponents of behavioral age estimation bills claim that their proposals avoid the massive security risks that come with mandatory age verification bills. However, much of the data that social media platforms collect from us “in the ordinary course of operation” is collected in order to serve us targeted behavioral ads. If we force platforms to use this imperfect data to make more important judgments about who can access their services, we risk entrenching those insidious data collection practices. Surely we don’t want to give social media companies more reasons to justify and sustain their reliance on this exploitative business model.

If you want to dig into the nuance here,...