Connecticut officials announced they will propose state legislation to protect youth on social media.
Governor Ned Lamont and state Attorney General William Tong met with other lawmakers on Wednesday to outline a bill they said would require social media companies to prohibit minors' access to platforms without parental consent. They said the bill is part of an ongoing effort to prevent youth from being exposed to harmful and addictive algorithms and notifications.
“This algorithmically driven machine learning, what it learns to do is send our kids things they want to look at so that they are glued and addicted to their phones. The things they want to look at are the things that are most harmful to them,” Tong said.
The bill requires social media companies to implement a method to verify whether a user is underage. If the user is identified as a minor, they would need parental consent before they can join a platform. Users under 18 may only have private, not public, accounts. The bill also requires tech companies to stop sending push notifications to minors between 9 p.m. and 8 a.m.
Lamont said he expects opposition from tech companies, but says lawmakers in Connecticut are united in support of the bill.
“Look, this is our best effort, we can, to protect your kids and give parents the tools they need to protect their kids,” Lamont said. “If they don't like what we’re doing to protect the kids, what is your plan to protect the kids?”
State Senator James Maroney said death by suicide is one of the leading causes of death for young people aged 10 to 24 years old. Maroney pointed to how concerns online can impact young people's mental and physical well-being in the real world. He compared online safety to children riding a bike with a helmet and knee pads for protection.
“We’re not saying don't ride a bike, but we want you to be safe while doing it. That’s what we want to do with social media now. We want to make sure that our kids are safe and they can lead healthy and productive lives,” Maroney said.
In 2025, legislators passed a similar bill to protect minors on social media, but it failed to pass. Critics of the bill argued that it would be difficult from a technical standpoint to determine the identity of users and whether or not they are adults. Tong said that although teenagers can sometimes circumvent restrictions, it's important that companies think creatively to solve the problem. Tong said the bill outlines stronger accountability rules for tech companies.
“The burden is not on us; the burden is on them. They're the ones that sell this product; they're the ones that market a product that is unsafe, without proper safeguards. So they need to figure it out,” Tong said.
Tong said companies would also be required to report to the state information about the minors on the platform, such as the number of users, the time of day they are logged on and other stats. If the bill passes, social media companies could face penalties through the Connecticut Unfair Trade Practices Act. Tong said the state plans to enforce the law “aggressively.”
Earlier this week, Tong was part of a coalition of states’ attorneys general demanding that xAI stop its AI chatbot from creating nonconsensual sexual images. The coalition highlighted concerns after reports that Grok, X’s built-in artificial intelligence chatbot, was generating sexual images of children. Grok said it was ‘horrified’ and will address problems when it happens. But Tong said companies are not doing enough.
“I don't care that you, after the fact, after the damage is done, that you report it to the police. Too late," Tong said. "You have to take action to protect people before the fact, before they abuse this technology."
