Government-Compelled Speech and the Groundhog Dayification of Social Media Regulation

Lawmakers intent on regulating social media platforms to safeguard minors must feel like Bill Murray’s Phil Connors character in Groundhog Day : They repeatedly wake up to discover courts declaring that their speech-restrictive handiwork violates the First Amendment rights of some combination of minors, adults, and platforms. Then, they frequently spend taxpayer dollars appealing those rebukes. For example, Georgia now is appealing a 2025 preliminary injunction blocking its age-verification and parental-consent law . It doesn’t need to be this way. The smug, self-centered Connors eventually broke free from his repetitiously maddening situation by learning from his mistakes, seeking self-improvement, and, as AEI’s Jonah Goldberg wrote , “doing things for others” and “doing kindness” to them. Lawmakers too can escape their cycle of statutory futility and still do good for others, especially minors and parents. Their redemptive path is simple : “embrace educational campaigns to promote the numerous parental tools and safety controls that already exist.” Put differently, lawmakers have a vital non-regulatory role to play—providing information to help parents control and monitor their children’s platform usage as they see fit. An April poll conducted for the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression found “that if Americans want anyone to watch over children’s browsing habits, it’s Mom and Dad, not Big Brother.” Specifically, 69 percent of respondents said they “somewhat,” “very much,” or “completely” trust parents to oversee social media use by children under age 18. In contrast, only 26 percent placed such trust in the federal government, with even fewer trusting social media companies. The data demonstrate far greater public confidence in letting parents—not lawmakers or businesses—regulate minors’ online activities. This makes complete sense. It squares with my observation that “every child is unique, and parents typically are in far better positions than miles-away lawmakers to understand their children’s distinctive capacities, needs, and interests regarding social media content.” One-size-fits-all legislation for minors doesn’t work. US District Judge Mark Walker emphasized this last year when he preliminarily blocked enforcement of parts of a Florida law that—among other restrictions—categorically bars anyone under age 14 from holding an account with a social media platform that deploys one of several allegedly “ addictive features .” Walker explained that: parents are best positioned to make the appropriately individualized determinations about whether or when their children should use social media platforms, and if so, which platforms and under what conditions. And there are numerous tools available for parents who wish to do so. Even setting aside the parental control and supervision tools offered by the websites themselves, parents can determine whether and when to let their children use internet-connected devices, they can utilize device-level settings to limit how long their children use them, or they can block specific websites from their children’s devices at the network level through their internet router. Walker’s injunction is on hold while Florida appeals his ruling. A current manifestation of the regulatory Groundhog Day phenomenon involves states compelling platforms to convey government-mandated warnings and disclosures. As I previously wrote , the strategy underlying this legislative tack seemingly is: “If you can’t constitutionally restrict social media platforms or the speech they convey, force them to transmit some of your own speech they’ll surely dislike.” These compelled-speech mandates raise constitutional concerns because, as I’ve described , “the First Amendment protects not only the right to speak, but also the right not to speak.” The right not to speak is especially robust when the government compels speech in contexts other than mandating that advertisers convey “ purely factual and uncontroversial information ” to prevent consumer deception when purchasing a good or service. Lawmakers, including ones from California , which settled a compelled-speech lawsuit filed against it by X Corp., are finding that surmounting this First Amendment right is difficult. In January, I explained why a federal judge in NetChoice v. Weiser issued a preliminary injunction barring “Colorado from enforcing part of a new law that compels social media platforms ‘to provide non-commercial disclosures to minors about the alleged health impacts of using their platforms.’” Judge William Martinez observed that instead of forcing platforms to spread its messages, Colorado “could have elected to provide minors with these disclosures itself.” Undaunted, the Centennial State last month filed its opening brief on appeal to the Tenth Circuit . Now comes another compelled-speech battle, NetChoice v. Ellison . This April-filed lawsuit challenges Minnesota’s warning-label law , which requires social media platforms to “ensure that a conspicuous mental health warning label . . . appears each time a user accesses” a platform. Minnesota can freely convey such warnings itself via its own educational initiatives. Instead, it hijacked the platforms’ expressive podium and now finds itself facing right-not-to-speak litigation. Ultimately, lawmakers can dodge Groundhog Day doom by adopting “ public-information campaign[s] ” and digital literacy programs that help parents and minors understand and deploy myriad extant safety tools and options. The post Government-Compelled Speech and the Groundhog Dayification of Social Media Regulation appeared first on American Enterprise Institute - AEI .