House approves Pritzker initiative to regulate social media algorithms

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (Capitol News Illinois) — A bill to regulate social media companies and the features they make available to minors is advancing in the Statehouse.

A bipartisan group of lawmakers in the House voted 82-27 to pass House Bill 5511, also known as the Children’s Social Media Safety Act. Gov. JB Pritzker proposed the bill, which is designed to make social media scrolling less addictive for children.

“What this bill is really designed to address is the weaponization of your data, your personal habits in a way that keeps kids glued and addicted to the screen,” bill sponsor Rep. Jennifer Gong-Gershowitz, D-Glenview, said.

The bill does not limit social media use to certain ages but does require platforms to allow users setting up an account to input their age, which would trigger certain settings on the device for users under 18 years old.

The bill mandates that information used to generate a social media feed cannot be “persistently associated with the user’s device” and based on content the user previously shared or interacted with. Users must follow the creator of the content or person who shares it to see the content in their feed. Additional content could only be provided to the user when they search for it.

The bill would also require social media platforms to have default privacy settings for minors that would stop addictive feeds, location sharing and transactions with digital currency. Platforms would also be prohibited from sending notifications to minor users between 10 p.m. and 7 a.m.

Companies that violate the law would have to pay fines.

The changes would take effect in 2028, and despite cracking down in some areas, Gong-Gershowitz said there won’t be restrictions on the content kids see.

“This bill does not include any content moderation or allow parents to monitor what children are doing online,” Gong-Gershowitz said. “It simply targets a harmful design feature like addictive algorithms that are designed to keep kids online. Children can still see the same content.”

Pritzker, some Republicans back it

Pritzker called on lawmakers during his February State of the State address to advance regulations.

“Everywhere I go, parents tell me one of their deepest concerns is the impact social media is having on their kids,” Pritzker said in his address. “It’s a challenge unique to this generation. And it is made worse by the perverse incentive that social media companies seem to have to keep kids scrolling no matter what the cost to their physical and mental health.”

Read more: Lawmakers advance Pritzker’s cell phone ban, social media regulations

Tackling children’s addictions to social media has been a bipartisan priority in Springfield in recent years and nine House Republicans joined Democrats in advancing the measure to the Senate.

“Up until this point, we haven’t had a lot of guardrails when it comes to social media use in our state,” Rep. Nicole La Ha, R-Lemont, told Capitol News Illinois. “Being a mom of school aged children, I think it’s really important that we start to have those conversations.”

La Ha said she is looking forward to using parental controls to make sure the content her kids see on their feeds is appropriate for their age.

Other Republicans said they supported the concept of the bill but would vote against it until more changes were made in the Senate.

Pritzker is also pushing lawmakers to tax social media companies based on the number of users they have in Illinois.

(Reporting by Ben Szalinski, Capitol News Illinois)

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