Report from the Arkansas Advocate
In Brief – US District Judge Timothy Brooks has issued a temporary injunction blocking Arkansas Act 900 that was set to restrict minors from accessing social media with certain features. The 2025 law, challenged by the tech industry trade group NetChoice, revised a 2023 statute struck down by the same judge. Like its predecessor, the new law required age verification for account creation. In his latest ruling, Brooks highlighted First Amendment problems with the law’s vague prohibition on “addictive practices”, as well as provisions mandating default protections for minors, such as disabling some notifications and enforcing maximum privacy settings. He concluded that while the later requirements imposed only minor burdens, they failed to meaningfully advance the state’s goals, writing that the Constitution does not permit restricting large amounts of speech for negligible benefit.
Context – Critics have argued for years that social media platforms are dangerous and harmful, especially for teens. The research data doesn’t back that up. Regardless, age-based restrictions, led by Australia’s 16-year-old age limit, are taking off in many countries. In the US, federal legislation has been stymied by partisan disagreements over the nature of the social media problem. So, anti-social media campaigners have turned to state legislation and civil litigation. They have focused their efforts on so-called “addictive” platform features as a strategy to circumvent federal law Sec. 230. Nevertheless, just as with the Arkansas’ laws, most state measures have been blocked on First Amendment grounds. Although rulings last year by panels of the 5th and 11th Circuits courts of appeals allowing Mississippi and Florida laws to stand may set up a Supreme Court clash. Civil lawsuits from thousands of private plaintiffs, school districts, and State AGs, may prove more impactful in the US. Juries in New Mexico and California recently ruled against the platforms and awarded multi-million-dollar verdicts. Enough expensive losses and the platforms may agree to make changes that would not pass First Amendment muster.