Federal judge blocks Utah's social media regulations

On Tuesday, a federal judge blocked Utah's social media regulations, ruling that they likely violate the First Amendment.

Citing a need to protect Utahns under the age of 18 from the harms social media use can cause to mental health, Utah lawmakers passed a pair of bills regulating how minors interact with those platforms. The legislation set strict rules for how young Utahns interacted with content and restricted what kind of data those companies could collect on minors.

The new rules were set to take effect on Oct. 1, but U.S. District Court Judge Robert Shelby granted a preliminary injunction to NetChoice, a coalition of tech companies that filed suit against the law in May. In the same ruling, Shelby dismissed a similar lawsuit from a group of Utah social media users for lack of standing.

In the ruling, U.S. District Court Judge Robert Shelby said Utah provided no evidence to support the claim that social media causes mental health problems for young users.

"Though the court is sensitive to the mental health challenges many young people face, Defendants have not provided evidence establishing a clear, causal relationship between minors' social media use and negative health impacts," Shelby wrote.

Preliminary injunction granted in lawsuit challenging Utah's social media regulations by Bryan Schott on Scribd

Utah had argued that the government needed to help parents protect their children online, but Shelby ruled the regulations were overly broad and intrusive.

"While Defendants present evidence suggesting parental controls are not in widespread use, their evidence does not establish parental tools are deficient. It only demonstrates parents are unaware of parental controls, do not know how to use parental controls, or simply do not care to use parental controls," Shelby said, adding that there's no evidence Utah had tried to promote the use of other widely available technologies to help parents police social media use by their children.

Utah's regulations also banned social platforms from using elements like continuous scrolling and push notifications for young account holders because they encouraged "over indulgence" and addictive behavior. Shelby said Utah offered no evidence that the law would reduce the time young people spend on social media platforms or that limiting such features would lead to improved mental health.

One of the more controversial aspects of the Utah regulations allowed minors to sue social media companies if they experience mental health problems that they can tie to their social media use. It also imposed a $2,500 fine on social media companies for every violation of the regulations.

Utah lawmakers passed regulations earlier this year that were a re-do of the rules they passed in 2023. Ironically, that do-over was an attempt to avoid any possible court challenges.

Utah won a partial victory in July when Judge Shelby ruled that a requirement that social media companies verify users' ages did not violate existing federal law.