{"id":37259,"date":"2025-02-04T11:51:31","date_gmt":"2025-02-04T17:51:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/?p=37259"},"modified":"2025-02-04T11:51:31","modified_gmt":"2025-02-04T17:51:31","slug":"bill-aimed-at-protecting-youth-online-considered","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/?p=37259","title":{"rendered":"Bill aimed at protecting youth online considered"},"content":{"rendered":"

A proposal meant to protect children\u2019s private information and provide parental tools to monitor their online safety was heard by the Banking, Commerce and Insurance Committee Feb. 3.<\/p>\n

\"Sen.
Sen. Carolyn Bosn<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

LB504, introduced by Lincoln Sen. Carolyn Bosn at the request of Gov. Jim Pillen, would create the Age-Appropriate Online Design Code Act. Under the bill, a covered online service would be required to \u201cexercise reasonable care\u201d in protecting user data and in the design and implementation of covered online services to prevent harms such as compulsive use, severe emotional distress, identity theft and severe psychological harm.<\/p>\n

A covered online service is defined as one that operates in Nebraska, is reasonably likely to be accessed by minors and meets certain revenue or volume thresholds. The bill would not apply to government entities.<\/p>\n

Among other provisions, the bill would require a covered online service to provide users with \u201ceasy-to-use tools\u201d that limit communications from other users, prevent the viewing of personal data, control in-game purchases and other transactions and place limits on the amount of time a user spends on the service.<\/p>\n

LB504 also would place limits on data retention and sharing and would require a covered online service to treat all users as minors unless they have knowledge that they are not. Parents would be provided with the ability to view, manage and control a child\u2019s privacy and account settings. The bill defines a \u201cchild\u201d as an individual who is 13 or younger.<\/p>\n

The state attorney general\u2019s office would enforce the bill\u2019s provisions and violations could result in a civil penalty of not more than $50,000 per violation.<\/p>\n

Bosn said the proposal is the product of a bipartisan effort to give parents the tools they need to keep children safe online, while not requiring the sort of content moderation that could result in First Amendment free speech challenges.<\/p>\n

Social media has consequences for the neurobiological development and mental health of children, she said, and LB504 would implement some of the recommendations from a 2023 US surgeon general\u2019s advisory report aimed at curbing those harms.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe think about safe design features in every other product we provide our most vulnerable children,\u201d Bosn said. \u201cSo why wouldn\u2019t we do that online?\u201d<\/p>\n

Lincoln pediatrician Philip Boucher testified in favor of the proposal. Children lack the ability to self-regulate, he said, and app developers know how to keep them interacting with platforms through \u201cconstant dopamine hits.\u201d As a result, he said, anxiety, depression and self-harm among youth has reached alarming levels and continues to rise.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s hard to be a kid right now; it\u2019s also hard to be a parent,\u201d Boucher said. \u201cToday\u2019s kids are living under a microscope \u2014 and inside a pressure cooker \u2014 where every thought, every picture, every moment can be documented, judged and used against them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jill Edmundson, who spent 25 years in software development, also spoke in support of LB504. She said her 9-year-old daughter inadvertently became engaged with \u201cpro-anorexia\u201d content during the pandemic and subsequently was diagnosed with the disease.<\/p>\n

Technology companies feasibly could address the kind of issues that led her daughter down that path, Edmundson said, but won\u2019t unless legally required to do so.<\/p>\n

\u201cAbsent commonsense legislation, we are all living on borrowed time \u2014 and our children are the ones who are going to pay the price,\u201d Edmundson said.<\/p>\n

Nebraska College of Law professor Kyle Langvardt testified in favor of the bill, calling it \u201cfully compatible\u201d with the First Amendment.<\/p>\n

Speaking on his own behalf, Langvardt said LB504 would not regulate online content but rather product design. As a result, he said, the bill would be the equivalent of \u201ctime, place or manner\u201d restrictions on free speech \u2014 such as an ordinance that prohibits loud music after a certain hour \u2014 that consistently have been deemed constitutional.<\/p>\n

Amy Bos, representing online trade association NetChoice, opposed the bill. She disagreed with the contention that the law does not regulate content. The broad definitions in LB504 do not provide meaningful guidelines to businesses and could lead regulators to target speech they dislike, she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cBy covering any service reasonably likely to be accessed by minors, this bill would regulate most of the internet,\u201d Bos said. \u201cThe Supreme Court has repeatedly rejected such sweeping attempts to restrict online speech.\u201d<\/p>\n

Also testifying in opposition was Dylan Severino of ACLU Nebraska. While supporting the bill\u2019s overall goal of child safety online, he said enforcement by the state\u2019s attorney general could be arbitrary and partisan depending upon who occupies the office.<\/p>\n

For example, Severino said, one attorney general might deem information provided to minors on guns to be harmful, while another might attempt to prohibit information on gender identity.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf anything, this bill has made it more clear that legislating content to protect minors is simply impossible in practice,\u201d he said. \u201cThe time and effort would be much better spent in education and outreach so that families can protect themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n

The committee took no immediate action on LB504.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A proposal meant to protect children\u2019s private information and provide parental tools to monitor their online safety was heard by the Banking, Commerce and Insurance Committee Feb. 3.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":36725,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6],"tags":[292],"class_list":["post-37259","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-banking-commerce-and-insurance","tag-sen-carolyn-bosn"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/UpdateBlogPhoto-4.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37259","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=37259"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37259\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37261,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37259\/revisions\/37261"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/36725"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}