Missouri’s proposed Social Media Safety for Minors Acts age-verification mandates would force every Missourian to hand over sensitive personal data to access lawful online speech — creating the very privacy risks the legislation claims to prevent. Missouri should work with the technology industry to craft targeted, constitutional solutions that genuinely protect kids without trampling free expression or exposing millions of users to data breaches.
NetChoice Testimony in Opposition to Missouri HB 3393/HB 2392 Social Media Safety Act for Minors Act
March 30, 2026
Missouri General Assembly
House Emerging Issues Committee
Dear Chair Christ, Vice-Chair Peters, Ranking Member Fuchs and Members of the Emerging Issues Committee,
NetChoice submits this testimony in respectful opposition to HB 3393 and HB 2392, which, while well-intentioned in their goal of protecting young Missourians online, impose unworkable technical mandates, create serious constitutional concerns, and would expose millions of adult users to unnecessary data collection in the process.
NetChoice is a trade association of leading internet businesses that promotes the value, convenience and choice that internet business models provide to American consumers. Our mission is to make the internet safe for free enterprise and free expression. Our members have taken issues of teen safety seriously and, in recent years, have rolled out numerous new features, settings, parental tools and protections to better empower parents and assist in monitoring their children’s use of social media. We share the sponsors’ concern for child safety online. We do not, however, share the view that this bill is the right tool to achieve that goal — and we urge the Committee to consider the serious legal and practical problems it presents before advancing it.
HB 3393 and HB 2392 Violate the First Amendment
HB 3393 and HB 2392 impose sweeping restrictions on constitutionally protected speech and association. Accessing social media platforms is a protected First Amendment activity, and the Supreme Court has made clear that minors, too, possess First Amendment rights. Courts have consistently struck down similar age-verification and minor-access laws as unconstitutional. Age verification laws have recently failed to withstand legal scrutiny in several states, with NetChoice securing permanent injunctions against such censorious laws in Arkansas, Louisiana and Ohio (See NetChoice v. Griffin, Western District of Arkansas (2023) https://netchoice.org/netchoice-v-griffin/, NetChoice v. Murrill, Middle District of Louisiana (2025) https://netchoice.org/netchoice-v-murrill-louisiana/, & NetChoice v. Yost, Southern District of Ohio (2024) https://netchoice.org/netchoice-v-yost).
The bill’s prohibition on independent account creation for minors under 16 imposes a content-based restriction on their ability to participate in public discourse online. In Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association (2011), the Supreme Court reaffirmed that restricting minors’ access to speech requires a compelling government interest and narrow tailoring. The bill fails that test. Its age-based account ban is not the least restrictive means of achieving the state’s interest, and courts will likely say so.
The universal age-verification requirement in Section 6 compounds this problem by chilling the speech of adults. Mandating that all Missouri users submit to identity verification before accessing a platform deters anonymous speech, a right long recognized as core to the First Amendment. The Supreme Court addressed nearly identical circumstances in Ashcroft v. ACLU (2004), where it struck down a federal age-verification mandate for online speech, finding that less restrictive alternatives—such as filtering software—were available and preferable. That reasoning applies with equal force here.
The bill’s blanket prohibition on serving advertising to minors under 16 restricts constitutionally protected commercial speech. Under the Central Hudson framework, the government must demonstrate that a speech restriction directly advances a substantial state interest in a narrowly tailored manner. A categorical advertising ban affecting an entire age cohort across all platforms does not satisfy that standard — it sweeps far too broadly, applying regardless of the content of the advertisement, the nature of the platform, or any demonstrated harm to the minor. Missouri should expect this provision to face immediate legal challenge, at significant cost to the state and with no demonstrated improvement in child safety.
Finally, Section 407.3475(11)(1) prohibits social media platforms from using “addictive or manipulative design features specifically targeting minors, including infinite-scroll mechanisms or auto-playing content without time-limit controls.” This provision may sound like a technical regulation, but it is in fact a direct regulation of how platforms curate and present constitutionally protected speech — and it cannot survive First Amendment scrutiny.
The Supreme Court addressed precisely this question in Moody v. NetChoice, 603 U.S. 707 (2024). In that landmark decision, the Court made clear that when a platform “compiles and curates” content for its users, it engages in editorial discretion protected by the First Amendment. The Court explained that a platform’s decisions about what content to surface, how to rank it and how to present it to users are expressive choices entitled to constitutional protection — just as a newspaper’s decisions about what stories to run and in what order are protected.
The provision at issue here strikes at the heart of that protected activity. Algorithmic feeds — including the continuous scroll and auto-play features singled out by the bill — are the primary mechanism by which platforms exercise their editorial judgment about what content is relevant and valuable to a particular user. Banning those features does not merely regulate conduct; it compels platforms to present content in a manner the government prefers. That is a content-neutral regulation with direct expressive consequences, and under Moody, it is constitutionally suspect.
The Age-Verification Mandate Creates Serious Privacy Risks
Section 6 requires social media platforms to implement age verification for all Missouri users before account creation. Far from protecting Missourians, this requirement would force every person—adult and minor alike—to submit government-issued identification or other sensitive personal data to private companies as a condition of accessing lawful speech online. The bill thus mandates the very large-scale data collection it purports to guard against.
There is no commercially viable age-verification system that can confirm a user’s age without collecting and processing sensitive personal information, including government IDs, biometrics or financial data. Requiring platforms to gather and process this information at scale creates large repositories of highly sensitive data that become prime targets for hackers and bad actors. A data breach affecting an age-verification database would expose far more Missourians to harm than the practices HB 3393/HB 2392 seeks to address. The bill’s requirement that platforms use verification techniques that are “independently certifiable as compliant with standards for data minimization and security” provides no meaningful protection, because no such industry standard currently exists. This vague mandate creates significant compliance uncertainty while doing nothing to protect Missourians’ personal information. The prohibition on retaining verification data “beyond what is strictly necessary” is equally undefined and unenforceable in practice.
In conclusion, HB 3393 and HB 2392 are well-intentioned but fundamentally flawed. It would expose Missourians to greater privacy risks, restrict constitutionally protected speech for minors and adults alike, impose technically unworkable compliance mandates and invite years of costly litigation—all while doing little to meaningfully improve child safety online.
NetChoice urges the committee to reject this bill and instead work with our members and the broader technology community to develop targeted, constitutional and effective child safety legislation. We stand ready to assist and welcome the opportunity to discuss these issues in greater detail.
Sincerely,
Amy Bos
Vice President of Government Affairs, NetChoice
NetChoice is a trade association that works to make the internet safe for free enterprise and free expression.