HB 4591’s sweeping age estimation and verification mandates force social media platforms to collect vast amounts of South Carolinians’ sensitive data — including government-issued identification from minors and parents alike — creating far greater privacy risks than the ones this bill claims to solve.
NetChoice Testimony in Opposition to South Carolina HB 4591, Stop Harms from Addictive Social Media Act
May 7, 2026
South Carolina Legislature
Senate Committee on Labor, Commerce and Industry
Dear Chair Davis and Members of the Committee:
On behalf of NetChoice, a trade association dedicated to preserving a free and open internet for both commerce and expression, I write to voice our firm opposition to House Bill 4591. At its core, this legislation would function as a digital ID mandate — requiring social media platforms to repeatedly verify the age of every South Carolina account holder, obtain documented parental approval before minors may open or keep accounts and ban a broad range of platform features the bill labels “addictive.”
We also want to offer some context that may be useful to the Committee’s deliberations. On February 5, 2026, Governor McMaster signed the South Carolina Age-Appropriate Design Code Act (“SC AACD”) into law. A challenge to that law—NetChoice v. Wilson—is now pending in federal court on First and Fourteenth Amendment grounds. We mention this only because the developing case law in that proceeding, along with similar challenges in several other states, will shed light on the very constitutional questions that HB 4591 raises. The Committee may find it worthwhile to allow that judicial record to develop further before acting, so that any legislation South Carolina enacts rests on the firmest possible legal foundation.
NetChoice respectfully asks that you oppose the legislation as it:
- Fails to protect a single citizen from harm
- Puts minors’ sensitive data at risk
- Violates the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution
We share the sponsor’s goal to better protect minors from harmful content online. NetChoice 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 ask that you oppose HB 4591, and instead use this bill as a way to jumpstart a larger conversation about how best to protect minors online and consider alternatives that do not raise constitutional issues.
HB 4591 Puts Minors’ Sensitive Data at Risk
This bill was ostensibly introduced to protect children but instead it puts children’s sensitive data at greater privacy and security risks. The bill imposes a complex and unprecedented age estimation mandate on covered platforms. Beginning within fourteen days of an account holder reaching the “first trigger date” — 25 cumulative hours of use in six months — platforms must estimate whether the account holder is over the age of seventeen, with 80% confidence. By the “second trigger date” at 50 hours, that threshold rises to 90%. Platforms must then continually update their estimates every 100 hours of use thereafter. And because platforms face significant liability — ten thousand dollars per violation — if they cannot meet these confidence thresholds, this bill creates powerful incentives to collect far more sensitive data about users than they do today, including about minors. That is the opposite of what this bill claims to do.
Additionally, the bill’s verifiable parental consent requirement will necessitate the collection of sensitive personal information from both minors and their parents. Documents which conclusively establish users’ ages and parental relationships are likely to be government-issued identification. Large-scale mandatory collection of highly sensitive government identification data—from both children and adults—dramatically increases the risks that this data will be captured, breached and misused by bad actors.
It is also important to address a common misconception: personalized feeds are not inherently unsafe for children. In fact, when properly designed, personalized algorithms serve as powerful safety tools. These systems can filter out harmful content, reduce exposure to bullying and harassment and surface age-appropriate educational and entertainment content that matches a young person’s interests and developmental needs.
Personalization allows platforms to learn what content keeps children engaged in positive ways—whether that’s science experiments, art tutorials, sports highlights or educational videos. The same technology that can recommend content can also identify and demote harmful material before children ever see it. Chronological feeds, by contrast, provide no filtering mechanism and expose users to whatever content appears in their network, regardless of its appropriateness. Mandating chronological-only feeds for minors would actually remove an important layer of protection and curation that helps keep young users safe.
Requiring identity authentication of all South Carolina users adds several unconstitutional barriers to sharing and accessing First Amendment-protected online speech.
HB 4591 Violates the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution – At Least Twice Over
This bill presents at least two independent First Amendment violations. First, it infringes on the rights of users to receive protected expression without first having their age “estimated” by the platform and, if determined to be a minor, securing parental consent. Second, it infringes on the rights of platforms to disseminate their own “distinctive expressive offering” to users without engaging in invasive age estimation and verification processes.
Age Estimation, Verification and Parental Consent Requirements are Unconstitutional
Restrictions on the access to and enjoyment of speech are rarely permitted. Indeed, restrictions are permitted only for certain categories of speech, and the Court has been careful to articulate such categories as obscenity, incitement, true threats and fighting words. But the government cannot create new categories of unprotected speech to solve some perceived social harm (Brown, 564 U.S. at 792). And, as Packingham recognized, social media is home to troves of protected, valuable speech (582 U.S. at 105).
When the government has attempted to restrict access to speech through requirements for speakers to “determine” or “verify” the age of audience members, the Supreme Court routinely struck them down. Such restrictions impermissibly chill speech by dissuading otherwise willing speakers and listeners from participating. The government may not impose barriers as a precondition to speak or receive the speech of others (See Reno v. ACLU, 521 U.S. 844, 855-857 (1997); Ashcroft v. ACLU, 542 U.S. 656 (2004)). Similarly, the Supreme Court also invalidated parental consent requirements to access lawful speech (Brown, 564 U.S. 786 (2011)).
While HB 4591 does not purport to prevent access to social media websites outright, it does restrict access to the website’s “distinctive expressive offering” (Moody v. NetChoice, 603 U.S. at 738). That offering is protected expression, and the government may not prevent access to that offering any more than it could dictate how the New York Times or Wall Street Journal arrange articles in their newspapers.
Restrictions on Dissemination of Lawful Speech are Unconstitutional
Distinct from the First Amendment injury HB 4591 inflicts on the viewers, readers and users of social media websites, the law inflicts a separate injury on websites because it prevents them from freely offering their own “distinctive expressive offering.”
The bill would make it unlawful for social media websites to offer content that is “recommended, selected, or prioritized” to users without either determining the user is an adult or obtaining parental consent for minors. This restriction prevents the exercise of editorial discretion. The judgment about what content to display “rest[s] on a set of beliefs about which messages are appropriate” to prioritize and display to users is expressive. And the government does not have the authority to alter those decisions merely because it believes it would make better choices (Id. at 738).
The Supreme Court’s decision last term in NetChoice emphatically held that the personalized feeds available on social media websites like Facebook and YouTube are protected expression under the First Amendment. Because HB 4591 would prevent the exercise of editorial discretion by prohibiting the use of these personalized feeds, it is unconstitutional.
NetChoice and its members are committed to making the internet safer for children. We have supported parental control tools, digital literacy education and industry-led initiatives to protect young users from harmful content. We recognize that more can and should be done, and we welcome the Legislature’s engagement on this issue. However, effective child online safety policy must be narrowly tailored, technically feasible and constitutionally sound. Because HB 4591 falls short on all of these accounts, we respectfully ask you to oppose the legislation. As always we offer ourselves as a resource to discuss any of these issues with you in further detail, and we appreciate the opportunity to provide the committee with our thoughts on this important matter. (The views of NetChoice expressed here do not necessarily represent the views of NetChoice members.)
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.