Protecting Children or Curtailing Rights? The Legal Showdown Over Social Media Bans for Minors

Amid concerns about the impact of social media on children, policymakers are exploring banning minors from the platforms with the goal of keeping them safe, but free speech advocates say the bans run afoul of the First Amendment. Several polls have found that Americans believe social media has a negative effect on the mental health of children. A YouGov poll published on December 10, 2025, found that 69 percent of American adults think social media has a “somewhat negative” or “very negative” impact on children’s mental health. And a Fox News poll released December 17 found that 64 percent of adults support banning social media for children under 16. At least eight American states have passed laws limiting minors’ access to social media. Meanwhile, more than 40 countries considered the idea, with 15 countries actively considering bans for children. Australia became the first country to implement a national ban on social media for children. And earlier this month, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced plans to impose such restrictions.While politicians argue that implementing age-based restrictions will help protect children, critics have raised questions about whether they are legal. Several courts have found that the bans violate the First Amendment rights of children and the social media companies. The general counsel at FIRE, Ronnie London, tells the Sun that giving the government the power to impose “one size fits all” regulation on speech should be a “last resort” and that it is “by design difficult” for the government to show that it should take such steps. “Are we better off having the government impose regulations? Or are we better off allowing private entities to self-regulate their private publishing platforms?” Mr. London asked. “I think from a first principles and a basic free speech advocacy position, putting that power in the hands of government is always a last resort. And the constitutional tests that we have are designed to impose very high barriers before we allow government regulation of speech like that.”Mr. London said that to survive a legal challenge, governments will have to show that the laws are narrowly tailored and that less restrictive measures would not address the concerns raised by lawmakers.Supporters of the bans point to studies that appear to show a correlation between social media usage and mental health harms. A 2019 study published in the JAMA Psychiatry found that adolescents who spent at least three hours a day on social media were at a heightened risk of mental health problems. In a 2023 interview with NPR, the then-surgeon general Vivek Murthy raised concerns about the platforms and their impact on children, telling the outlet that “most kids” he had spoken to said that social media made them feel worse. “The bottom line is we do not have enough evidence to conclude that social media is, in fact, sufficiently safe for our kids,” he said. Mr. Murthy told NPR that there are gaps in research about the “full extent of impact” of social media on children, including its harms and benefits.But those gaps in data about the impact of social media are a problem for social media bans, Mr. London said, as he insisted there is not a proven correlation between social media usage and mental health harms, noting that some studies have found that the platforms can have positive impacts on children. A researcher at the University of Rochester Medical Center, Dr. Meredith Gansner, said in a blog post in November 2025 that social media can help teenagers make friends and connect with other young people who have similar interests, or find online communities that give them a sense of belonging and affirmation. Mr. London suggested that there could be market forces that could lead social media platforms to take steps on their own to limit kids’ access to content. However, a senior fellow focused on technology culture at the American Enterprise Institute, Christine Rosen, wrote in a column in National Review that leaving it up to social media companies to address safety concern is “like the Wolf, dressed as Grandmother, telling Little Red Riding Hood that it’s much safer to snuggle up with him, within reach of his fangs, than to walk back into the woods.” Meanwhile, a group of researchers, Daniel Frost, Sarah Coyne, and Jane Shawcroft, wrote in the After Babel Substack, raised doubts about the effectiveness of the various tools tech companies have rolled out to give parents more control of what content their children can access on devices. “They must learn about different controls across multiple platforms, figure out how to implement them, and monitor the controls to ensure they remain effective, while trying to balance children’s growing autonomy and need for privacy as they enter the teenage years,” the researchers wrote. While the researchers say those controls place a “heavy burden” on parents, Mr. London noted that some companies, such as Apple, are working to make it easier for parents to set limits for their children. Earlier this month, Apple announced new tools that let parents limit who their children can communicate with, what apps they can access, and how much screen time their children can have. Mr. London responded to the concern that leaving it up to parents to decide what their children can access would create a burden, asking, “Isn’t that where we, in fact, societally have decided to place responsibility for minor well-being?” He also said that parents have the “fundamental choice” to decide whether or not to give their children a computer or a smartphone, which could impact how much of a burden parents have. As the legal challenges against bans on minors using social media make their way through the courts, there may be some indications of how the Supreme Court will rule if the matter winds up before the justices. In 2025, the high court rejected NetChoice’s request to temporarily prevent Mississippi from enforcing its law that required children to obtain their parents’ consent to open an account. However, Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote in a concurrence that the law is “likely unconstitutional.”The Supreme Court also held in the 1975 case Erznoznik v. City of Jacksonville that minors are “entitled to a significant measure of First Amendment protection,” and that “only in relatively narrow and well-defined circumstances may government bar public dissemination of protected materials to them.”In a 2011 decision, Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association, the Supreme Court upheld a lower court’s ruling that struck down California’s prohibition on children buying violent video games. The justice who wrote the opinion, Antonin Scalia, said that the government “possesses legitimate power to protect children from harm,” but it does not have a “free-floating power to restrict the ideas to which children may be exposed.”Justice Samuel Alito wrote in a concurring opinion in Brown that he agreed with the decision. However, he said that the court should “make every effort to understand the new technology” and should not “jump to the conclusion that new technology is fundamentally the same as some older thing with which we are familiar.”“We should not hastily dismiss the judgment of legislators, who may be in a better position than we are to assess the implications of new technology,” Justice Alito wrote. Meanwhile, Justice Clarence Thomas dissented in Brown, writing that the decision “does not comport with the original public understanding of the First Amendment.” He said that the freedom of speech, as originally understood, does not “include a right to speak to minors (or a right of minors to access speech) without going through the minors’ parents.”

Protecting Children or Curtailing Rights? The Legal Showdown Over Social Media Bans for Minors

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