Over the last few years, lawmakers across the country have zeroed in on blaming social media as the central culprit behind youth mental health struggles. The result has been a patchwork of state laws, some already on the books, others tied up in court, that try to impose age limits, parental consent rules, or design restrictions on the platforms themselves. Arkansas, Ohio, Florida, Georgia, and Utah all passed laws that flat-out required age verification and parental permission for minors to hold accounts. Each of these measures was quickly challenged, and each one has been blocked, at least for now, on free-speech grounds. Judges have been blunt in their criticism.
In Georgia, Judge Amy Totenberg called the law’s tailoring “flawed” and concluded it “curbs the speech rights of Georgia’s youth while imposing an immense, potentially intrusive burden on all Georgians.”
In Florida, Judge Mark Walker warned that banning accounts “directly burdens those youths’ rights to engage in and access speech.”
And in Utah, Judge Robert Shelby struck down the state’s entire law as facially unconstitutional under the First Amendment. The message from the courts has been consistent: protecting kids may be compelling, but these bills often sweep too broadly.
Not every law has gone down in flames, though. Mississippi’s 2024 statute requiring age checks and parental consent for minors is technically in effect after the Supreme Court declined to freeze it this summer.
But even there, Justice Brett Kavanaugh noted the law is “likely unconstitutional,” hinting that its days may be numbered once the full case plays out.
Nebraska has passed its own Parental Rights in Social Media Act, set to take effect in 2026, which will give parents sweeping powers over their children’s accounts. This law is especially egregious, requiring that parents have complete access to their child’s social media accounts, including the ability to read their child’s private messages. Whether that law can withstand the constitutional gauntlet remains to be seen.
At the federal level, efforts like the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) and COPPA 2.0 aim to take a more nuanced approach, shifting the burden onto platforms to protect children by disabling addictive features, limiting targeted ads, and raising privacy protections. Neither has made it through Congress yet, but they remain on the table as potential national solutions. For now, the landscape remains fractured: states continue to push the envelope, platforms continue to fight back, and the courts continue to remind everyone that the First Amendment still applies, even to TikTok.
Why Social Media Bans are Harmful for Youth
Restricting social media access for young people can be harmful to them in many different ways. First of all, social media is a major way that teenagers communicate and keep in contact with their friends. Lots of teenagers use social media apps to message their friends regularly. If laws like the one suggested in Nebraska—where parents could have access to all private messages of a teenager’s account—were to be passed, then that is a blatant attack on the privacy of minors. If teenagers cannot freely communicate with each other, without the ever-watchful eyes of a parental managing software, it will have disastrous negative effects on their mental development. Teenagers need to be able to have a suffident amount of agency in order to build fundamental life skills such as discipline and personal responsibility.
Social media also allows kids to let their creativity shine. Many teenagers use social media platforms like youtube or tiktok that allows them to create videos to share to a wide audience. Being able to create content for social media channels allows teenagers to tap into their creative aspects of their minds. Along with this, creating content for social media also motivates teenagers to learn certain skills like video editing and production. Apps like youtube also work as career opportunities, since people who build up enough subscribers can earn money in ad revenue. For example, the youtuber Tommyinnit started his channel at a young age, and quickly developed a following for his humor and well edited minecraft gameplay videos. By the time he was 16 years old, he already had 3 million subscribers on youtube, and was making good money from ad revenue. There are many other stories of teenagers who built up enough of a following on social media to become monetized and earn money from their creativity. Banning and restricting social media for minors prevents teenagers from accessing these opportunities that could provide them with good money and fame. In fact, social media is one of the very few ways that teenagers can earn this life-changing money, due to the fact they are too young to hold high paying jobs. Disallowing minors from participating in social media, or restricting their access to it, is blatant discrimination, and prevents teenagers from practically the only way they can earn large sums of money in their youth.
People may argue that allowing young people to obsess over follower counts, and the prospect of earning money will damage their mental health, and open them up to exploitation. However, the solution to this concern is to introduce legislation to protect the rights of young people who are attempting to make money on the internet, rather than restricting their access to social media entirely. California and Illinois both have laws addressing this issue, making sure that children used in social media videos by their parents have the right to receive large amounts of the revenue from the videos. These laws treat child influencers like child actors, giving them labor protections under the law. This prevents children from being exploited on social media by their parents, without being able to earn any money. These laws are positive examples of policy made to protect children on social media from exploitation, while also protecting their rights and freedoms to be on social media.
Social media also allows friends to keep up with each other over long distances. In my experience, when I was in middle school, a close friend of mine moved to another state. Without social media, I wouldn’t have been able to keep up with her and maintain the same level of closeness within our friendship. Along with that, there are many situations where teenagers grow up in places where they simply don’t have access to as many opportunities to interact with people. Let’s say a kid is born into a small town with only a few hundred people. They aren’t going to have the same opportunities to connect with as many of their peers as a kid who was born into a big city of over a million people. Social media mitigates this problem, by letting youth connect with each other from all over the country and the world. The teenager within the small town may not have anyone near them with the same interests and hobbies as themself; however, using social media, they can reach out to thousands of different communities of people who share those interests, with hundreds of fellow teenagers in each one. This facilitates their ability to be themself, and engage in the things they love. Taking away their ability to access social media unfairly harms youth who can’t access groups of people with the same common interests within the comfort of their own town.
Along with this, there are very many circumstances where parental oppression can be a factor in hindering a teenager’s ability to connect with others. For example, a kid may not be able to join the clubs they want, or make friends with the people they desire, due to a parent’s restrictive nature. Certain parents blatantly do not have their child’s best interests at heart, and will go to lengths to make sure that a child’s ability to make friends is hindered. However, if the kid has access to social media, they can form these connections without the burden of their parents.
Similarly, certain life circumstances may hinder a child’s ability to connect with people in real life as well. A child with a disability may have restrictions preventing the accessibility of ‘going outside and making friends’. Furthermore, a child with a chronic illness may have to take much greater precautions to protect their health that may prohibit them from connecting with those around them in the physical world. Or a child who has to take care of a family member with a disability may have a majority of their time preoccupied with caring for their family that they don’t have the same amount of time to go ‘hang out’. Social media relieves all of these circumstances. Connecting with others on social media gives these children an easy way to make friends, despite the unfortunate burden that has been placed upon them by the world.
Social media is a place of change. Lots of clubs, organizations and other activities use social media as a place to organize and operate. Oftentimes, teenagers may not have access to all of the organizations or clubs they would like to be a part of- within their school or town. Because of that, social media is instrumental to making sure youth can organize across large distances, and come together for common goals. For example, this very organization, the National Youth Rights Association, uses social media platforms to operate, since we have members all across the country. If a state were to pass a law preventing or restricting minors’ ability to access social media, any member within that state wouldn’t be able to be part of the association, since they would have no way to organize with us. Lawmakers usually look at social media for its damaging aspects, but tend to ignore the benefits it can provide to individuals who want to contribute to ideas and causes. Taking away a group’s ability to access the place where they can advocate for change in the world is a very clear attack on their fundamental rights.
Social media allows for a free exchange of ideas. If you go on social media platforms, you will see a great many differing ideals. You may agree with some, you may disagree with others, and you may even think some ideas are harmful. However, that is what the very essence of free speech and free expression is: the ability to express any idea and opinion you believe in. That is the core of our first amendment rights in which our country was founded upon. Social media has remained a bastion for free discussion and expression for a long time, but is now currently under attack. Restricting minors’ access to social media prevents minors from engaging in this place of free expression and discussion, and therefore is violating their first amendment rights.
These types of restrictions are blatant attacks on the autonomy of minors. Because these laws disregard their constitutionally protected rights, they’re enforcing the idea that minors do not have access to the first amendment in the same way that adults do. These types of laws are discriminatory based on the immutable factor of age—which people have no control of. Imagine the backlash if there were laws set in place preventing people from accessing social media based on other immutable factors like race or gender. And yet, when it comes to age, a large majority of people are in favor of restricting people’s rights, on the basis that “they don’t know any better”, or “they’re vulnerable”, or “we know what’s best for them”. These discriminatory statements are attacks on the self agency, personal responsibility, and self discipline of youth, and should not be the groundwork for allowing unconstitutional restrictions on social media to be passed.
Because social media is a place where most ideas can be exchanged freely, it allows teenagers to be exposed to new ideas and aspects of reality that they were not familiar with. Since social meda exists on a global scale, it exposes you to facets of the world that you would have never learned about without its existence. For example, from using the social media app known as Discord, I have met people from tiny countries I hadn’t been prompted to learn about before. Getting to know about their life and culture have expanded my horizons in ways that I wouldn’t have even known. Getting exposed to new ideas allows kids to better shape their identities and become more of themselves.
While social media may not be a completely positive place, the benefits of social media access far outweigh the downsides. Allowing minors to have access to a place where they can immerse themselves in a free exchange of ideas, and connect with all different people, from all backgrounds of life, lets them develop their personal identity and self agency. Restricting their ability to access social media is a blatant violation of their constitutional rights, and pushes a disgusting agenda that teenagers are somehow incapable of thinking for themselves and handling freedom.
Along with this, many kids grow up in sheltered environments, living under parents who operate under the ideal of “My way or the highway.” In these situations, any opinion or idea that goes against the norm is shunned and cast out. These sheltered homes hinder a child’s development, by preventing them from coming into contact with other aspects of the world. These kids are basically indoctrinated into developing the exact same views on the world as their parents, since they had no other choice in the environment they grew up in. But social media can help to break teenagers free from this oppression, and have free access to information about the world that was previously unavailable to them.
Similarly, hyper-conservative and religious parents will oftentimes try to restrict their child’s knowledge of necessary information for their health. Some conservative parents believe it is wrong, or immoral for their children to learn about important information, such as basic sex education, and will therefore attempt to shelter their children from said knowledge. Since basic sex education is extremely necessary, in order to know things like how to properly manage periods, how to prevent STDs, and how to engage in safe intercourse, these parents do their kids a major disservice in sheltering them from it. Social media, and the internet in general can again come in to remediate this problem, since kids can use these things to educate themselves properly on what their parents are trying to prevent them from knowing.
Social media can also give vulnerable minors access to safe places in which they can express themselves freely. Many kids grow up in strict environments, due to their parents’ oppressive style of controlling their child’s identity. For example, growing up in a homophobic family can detrimentally impact the mental health of closeted queer children, fearing being shunned or facing punishments for trying to express who they really are. Social media can give these vulnerable minors access to safe places where they can meet fellow queer youth who are dealing with similar struggles.
Research and survey data support this, by showing that social media functions as a “lifeline” for many LGBTQ teenagers by helping them find community, support, and identity affirmation that they often cannot access in their offline environments. LGBTQ teens are more likely than their peers to face isolation, stigma, or lack of acceptance in their families, schools, or local communities. Social media helps fill that gap by allowing them to connect with others who share similar identities, access information about sexuality and gender, and explore their identity in a safer or more controlled way. For example, according to a study by The Trevor Project, a majority of LGBTQ+ youth use online platforms as a way to connect with others because it is difficult to do so in their daily lives
In other places around the world, where social media bans for youth have gone into effect, the negative impacts of this are on full display. For example, Australia has a full social media ban for young people under 16 years old, preventing them from accessing platforms like Instagram, Tiktok, etc. I recently spoke to John Pane, Chair of Electronic Frontiers Australia (A digital Freedom Organization), who put the harms of this ban on full display. He shared the concerns I did, and expressly mentioned how Social Media bans disproportionately harm Queer youth (especially those living in unsupportive homes), disabled youth, and youth living in Australia’s rural communities.
You can watch the full interview here:
In general, social media can be a place where minors go in hopes of receiving mental health support. Not all kids have access to a strong support system in their real life, which often leads kids in troubled homes to receive comfort from those they meet online. Certain life circumstances such as living in abusive homes, or unstable families will cause kids to feel like they are unable to open up to their family or those around them in their real life. Along with this, kids in troubled homes tend to have difficulty making friends with those around them, which further leads them to become isolated. Sometimes, social media can provide a well needed escape for these kids in their trying times. Due to minors’ access to mental healthcare, such as therapy and suicide prevention, being extremely limited, it is especially pivotal from youth to be able to find any kind of mental health support on the internet.
In fact, massive communities have been formed on social media for the sole purpose of garnering a supportive community for young people who need mental health assistance. One of the main platforms where this occurs is Discord. In writing this blog, I got in contact with a mental health safe place server in discord known as Moments, with almost 17,000 members. When interviewing one of their mental health advocates, who is a member of the moderation team, she revealed some shocking truths about the struggles youth go through, and the reprieve that mental health safe places servers can offer struggling teens.
When asked about what the server does, and how they help people with their mental health, the moderator who goes by the username of Abyss, said, “We like to bring people together by forming friendships and providing one on one support.”
This mere action of creating a safe environment where teens and young adults can be open about the struggles of their life, can have a major impact.
“When I found Moments, I was in a very dark place, I was ready to end everything,” Abyss said, discussing how she first discovered the server at 15 years old, ”They welcomed me in and I found a home.”
Her direct experience reflects how these safe place servers can help teens who are in their darkest hour, and can provide a much needed sense of community to those who lack it within their lives. But with restrictions and potential bannings that are in pending legislation, teens may have their ability to access these servers ripped away from them—which could harm vulnerable youth who are already in dark mental places.
When asked how her life would have turned out, if she was never able to access the safe place server, Abyss responded, “I wouldn’t even be here. I am from the foster care system, and my life is pure hell, so with this server I can be open about my feelings and not be put down for it like I would in real life.”
“I don’t have any safe place where I live,” Abyss added, ”and other people who are similar to me, foster care kids, are even worse off.”
Her story highlights the impact that social media safe places have on kids who are living in unfortunate life circumstances, such as the foster care system. These youth are especially vulnerable, because their lives are constantly changing, negatively impacting their ability to connect with others and make friends. Because of this, teenagers like Abyss turn to social media as a way of finding solace in the hardships they’re going through.
These safe place servers, while not being within their members’ real life, act as the last bastion of support where these troubled youth can get the support they so desperately need. Taking that away from them will have disastrous effects on their lives. It is often these situations that politicians do not take into account when they are making these sweeping regulations to try and strip away the rights of people they blatantly do not care about.
When it comes to struggling youth turning to social media, those who are in support of age-based social media bans have the narrative all wrong. People see how the teenagers that tend to chronically engage in social media are dealing with mental problems, and thus have difficulty making friends. Therefore, people tend to falsely assume that social media, and engaging with online communities is the cause of these problems. However, the opposite is in fact true. Teenagers dealing with mental problems because of their life challenges, or those who have difficulties making friends in the real world tend to gravitate to social media because it provides a reprieve from the issues of their real life. It consoles them, gives them an entirely new world that they can be whoever they want to be, not burdened by the problems of their life. Taking this away from them will do more damage to struggling teens than it would help them. Removing their ability to access social media wouldn’t just magically give troubled youth the ability to heal their mental ailments, or connect with others in the physical world. All it would do is take away the one place they are actually able to find this sense of community they had been lacking.
Regulations and parental controls that lawmakers are trying to drive into social media platforms will only harm youth as well. They say their goal is to “protect children”, but realistically, they just want control. One of the most disgusting examples of this, is the previously discussed law in Nebraska, which requires parents to have complete access to their child’s social media accounts, giving them the ability to read their private messages.
When asked about how this law would affect the minors in the server, Abyss responded, “If their parents know about [what they were going through], they’re probably gonna try to control them, not help them.”
This is coming from someone who actively works to help teenagers through their mental struggles, so she knows firsthand about the lives that distressed kids are experiencing. People who actually talk with youth who are enduring hardship understand the terrifying repercussions of these types of regulations, but politicians still push them anyway.
Restricting social media for minors is a direct attack on minors’ rights and mental health. Legislators try to focus on the dangers of the internet in order to convince people that they are acting in the best interest of teenagers, but in reality, this couldn’t be further from the truth. Social media is a place of free speech, or organization, and most importantly, of community, where teenagers can feel free to experience every aspect of the world, and meet with all kinds of different people who may end up becoming life-long friends and who will help them through their greatest challenges. They should not have these experiences taken away from them without any consent, just based on the immutable factor of their age. If you support freedom, you must understand how incredibly pivotal it is to fight back against social media bans and restrictions for minors.
The National Youth Rights Association
If you’re interested in Youth Rights, consider volunteering with NYRA. We are always looking for new members and would love to have you on board. Along with this, if you have a personal story about how social media restrictions have negatively impacted your life, you can email us at nyra@youthrights.org if you would like to help us get your story out to the world and raise awareness to fight against these restrictions.
The text of The Harms of Social Media Restrictions and Bans for Minors © 2026 by Xillion is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0
