Stop the Child Censorship Bill in the Senate!

Wednesday, the Massachusetts House amended S.2581 to add a ban social media use by children under 14. The bill would require parental consent for children under 16. The unamended Senate bill bans K-12 students from using their phones during the school day.

The amended bill passed in the House 129 to 25. Opposition was largely from Republicans and Connolly and Uyterhoeven, two progressive Democrats from Cambridge/Somerville. The amended bill will be sent to the Senate to approve the House’s change. If the Senate agrees, the bill will have one more vote in each chamber before it can go to the Governor. When the Senate will take up the bill is unclear, but Senate President Karen Spilka said she “excited to review their proposal”.

We need to stop this bill! Find your Massachusetts senator and call their office! If the first link doesn’t work for you, use this method to search for your legislator. Tell them:

• Social media bans harm children by preventing them from communicating with other children like them, including LGBTQ+ youth and those with disabilties;
• Age-verification systems are a tax on free speech for everyone. They require documentation that thousands of adults do not have or will have to go out of their way and their pay check to acquire;
• Providing private information makes us all vulnerable to governments that intend to harm us, corporations that intend to profit off us and hackers that intend to scam us;
• Many children will find ways to route around such censorship anyway.

Find out more about social media bans

Australia has already imposed age-based social media bans. It is both harming children with disabilities by preventing them from communicating with people like them and encouraging children and teens to route around censorship. The harms these ham handed censorship laws claim to fix are not backed up by reality.

Age-verification systems put a gate in front of our 1st Amendment right to freedom of speech! They require that everyone prove they are old enough by presenting identification. The scanned image of your drivers license, birth certificate or passport will make its way to data brokers and put in your permanent corporate and/or government record. If the data exists in a server somewhere, it will get out to criminals. Even if it worked and respected our right to privacy, millions would be prevented from speaking because they lack identification proving their age. People of color or who are poor or undocumented or have a disability are more likely to not have the required identification.