Social media platforms will face a bevy of new restrictions in New Jersey that limit their use of children’s data, restrict algorithmic content recommendations to minors, and block notifications during school hours, among a range of others.
The new restrictions, which are set to take effect in September 2027, flow from legislation Gov. Mikie Sherrill signed Tuesday and are New Jersey’s bid to regulate tech giants the governor said federal policymakers had largely left to their own devices.
“Big tech isn’t just the big tobacco of our era. They are worse. They designed platforms that highjacked our kids’ attention spans,” Sherrill said at a bill signing ceremony in Jersey City. “The typical American teen spends about 35 hours a week, almost a full-time job, on platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube.”
The restrictions in the New Jersey Kids Code Act would require privacy settings on minors’ social media accounts be set to their strictest mode and would limit platforms’ ability to request minors change those settings.
It would restrict platforms’ use of children’s data to the purposes for which it was collected and bar algorithmic content recommendations unless a minor specifically requests more or less content from a given account or of a specific type.
The restrictions mandate that social media platforms limit the discoverability of children’s accounts, both to adults on their own sites and through search engines.
