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1 H.797
2 Introduced by Representatives Arsenault of Williston, Anthony of Barre City,
3 Berbeco of Winooski, Burrows of West Windsor, Buss of
4 Woodstock, Carpenter of Hyde Park, Carroll of Bennington,
5 Chapin of East Montpelier, Chesnut-Tangerman of Middletown
6 Springs, Cole of Hartford, Dodge of Essex, Dolan of Essex
7 Junction, Graning of Jericho, Headrick of Burlington, Hooper of
8 Randolph, Jerome of Brandon, LaBounty of Lyndon, Lalley of
9 Shelburne, Logan of Burlington, McGill of Bridport, Mrowicki
10 of Putney, Mulvaney-Stanak of Burlington, Nugent of South
11 Burlington, Stebbins of Burlington, Torre of Moretown, and
12 Williams of Barre City
13 Referred to Committee on
14 Date:
15 Subject: Commerce; consumer protection; public health; social media
16 platforms; child users; addiction
17 Statement of purpose of bill as introduced: This bill proposes to enhance the
18 authority of the Attorney General to regulate social media platforms in
19 Vermont for the purpose of protecting the health and safety of child users. In
20 addition, it provides a financial structure to support additional resources
21 needed by the Attorney General to administer and implement its provisions.
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1 An act relating to the regulation of social media platforms for the protection
2 of child users
3 It is hereby enacted by the General Assembly of the State of Vermont:
4 Sec. 1. 9 V.S.A. chapter 63, subchapter 12 is added to read:
5 Subchapter 12. Social Media Platforms
6 § 2497. TITLE
7 This subchapter shall be known and may be cited as “the Vermont Social
8 Media Safety Act”.
9 § 2497a. PURPOSE
10 The purpose of this subchapter is to enhance the authority of the Attorney
11 General to regulate social media platforms in Vermont for the purpose of
12 protecting the health and safety of child users.
13 § 2497b. FINDINGS; INTENT
14 (a) The General Assembly finds:
15 (1) In May 2023, U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy issued an
16 Advisory on Social Media and Youth Mental Health. Surgeon General
17 Advisories are reserved for significant public health challenges that require the
18 nation’s immediate awareness and action.
19 (2) The Advisory notes that social media use by youth is nearly
20 universal. Studies show that up to 95 percent of youth 13–17 years of age use
21 social media platforms: two-thirds of whom report daily use, while one-third
22 report using social media “almost constantly.” Although 13 years of age is
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1 commonly the required minimum age used by social media platforms in the
2 United States, nearly 40 percent of children 8–12 years of age use social
3 media.
4 (3) A 2023 Gallup survey found that the average teen in the United
5 States spends 4.8 hours on social media per day, and 22 percent of 10th grade
6 girls spend seven or more hours on social media per day.
7 (4) The Advisory cautions that, “excessive and problematic use of social
8 media can harm children and adolescents,” and that, “social media platforms
9 are often designed to maximize user engagement, which has the potential to
10 encourage excessive use and behavioral dysregulation.”
11 (5) The percentage of U.S. teen girls 12–17 years of age who had major
12 depression in the past year increased 145 percent between 2010 and 2021. For
13 teen boys, the increase during the same time period was 161 percent. This
14 time period aligns with the steady rise of social media use among teens.
15 (6) The 2021 Vermont Youth Risk Behavior Survey, which surveys
16 middle and high school students in Vermont, found that 35 percent of high
17 school students experienced poor mental health “most of the time” or
18 “always.” The same was true for 22 percent of middle school students. In
19 addition, 18 percent of middle school students had “seriously thought about
20 suicide,” and one in five high school students had hurt themselves without VT LEG #372241 v.4
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1 wanting to die in the past 12 months. A full seven percent of high school
2 students in Vermont had attempted suicide.
3 (7) Social media platforms manipulate brain chemistry through the use
4 of such features as “likes,” infinite scroll, and ephemeral content, effectively
5 “drugifying” their products. As explained by psychiatrist and addiction expert
6 Dr. Anna Lembke: “Technology and innovation (have) allowed us to drugify
7 almost every human behavior . . . The rising rates of depression, anxiety, and
8 suicide . . . are due in part to the fact that we are overloading our brain’s
9 reward pathway with too much dopamine . . . In our brain’s effort to
10 compensate for too much pleasure, we are essentially individually and
11 collectively downregulating our own dopamine production and transmission,
12 not just to baseline levels, but actually below baseline levels. So we are in a
13 dopamine deficit state. Which means that we’re all unhappier, more anxious,
14 more depressed, more irritable, less able to take joy in the things that used to
15 give us joy or that have given people joy for generations, and also more
16 susceptible to pain.”
17 (8) The harmful effects of such design features are particularly
18 problematic for the most vulnerable among us – our children.
19 (9) Social media addiction is a type of behavioral addiction that is
20 characterized by an urge to constantly use social media.
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1 (10) Children who compulsively use social media may be at risk of
2 developing serious physical and mental health problems, including suicidal
3 thoughts, self-harm, depression, eating disorders, ADD/ADHD, distorted self-
4 image and, in some cases, death.
5 (11) Many design features are specifically intended to promote and
6 prolong user engagement on a social media platform to maximize company
7 profit from targeted advertising and data harvesting, despite causing child users
8 significant physical and mental harm.
9 (12) This business model must be subject to public health and regulatory
10 oversight in a manner that promotes accountability and fairness as well as
11 innovation and quality. In other words, regulations must strike an appropriate
12 balance between preserving the potential benefits of social media use among
13 child users and mitigating the potential risk of harm from excessive and
14 problematic use.
15 (13) In the unfortunate absence of federal action, 35 states and Puerto
16 Rico have legislation pending that would regulate one or more aspect of social
17 media platforms. Eleven states have enacted laws or adopted resolutions on
18 the subject.
19 (14) Vermont, similarly, has a compelling governmental interest in
20 exercising its consumer protection authority to protect unsuspecting child users
21 from developing and suffering the tragic effects of social media addiction.
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1 (b) Through this subchapter, it is the intent of the General Assembly to
2 apply long-standing consumer protection principles to social media companies
3 and in so doing explicitly recognize the intangible forms of injury associated
4 with the use of social media platforms, as well as the appropriateness of
5 applying such principles to the company-consumer relationship established by
6 the provision and use of a social media platform. It is not the intent of the
7 General Assembly to establish requirements that are more burdensome than
8 reasonably necessary to accomplish the subchapter’s purpose or that
9 unconstitutionally infringe upon rights protected by the First Amendment to
10 the U.S. Constitution, or Chapter I, Article 13 of the Vermont Constitution.
11 § 2497c. DEFINITIONS
12 As used in this subchapter:
13 (1) “Addiction” means the use of one or more social media platforms,
14 the use of which:
15 (A) indicates preoccupation or obsession with, or withdrawal or
16 difficulty to cease or reduce the use of, a social media platform despite the
17 child user’s desire to cease or reduce such use; and
18 (B) causes physical, mental, emotional, developmental, or material
19 harm to the child user.
20 (2) “Child user” means a person who is under 18 years of age and uses
21 one or more social media platforms.
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1 (3) “Content” means any statements, materials, documents, photographs,
2 graphics, or other information that is created, posted, shared, or otherwise
3 transmitted on a social media platform.
4 (4) “Design feature” means any practice, affordance, algorithm, or other
5 technology related to a user’s experience on a social media platform.
6 (5) “Harmful” means causes or contributes to or has the potential to
7 cause or contribute to social media addiction among child users of a social
8 media platform.
9 (6) “Public or semipublic internet-based service or application” excludes
10 any internet-based service or application that is used to facilitate
11 communication within a business or enterprise among employees or affiliates
12 of the business or enterprise, provided that access to the service or application
13 is restricted to employees or affiliates of the business or enterprise using the
14 service or application.
15 (7) “Social media company” or “company” means a person that
16 provides a social media platform.
17 (8)(A) “Social media platform” or “platform” means a public or
18 semipublic internet-based service or application that:
19 (i) allows users to construct a public or semipublic profile for the
20 purposes of using the platform, populate a list of other users with whom the VT LEG #372241 v.4
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1 user shares a social connection through the platform, and post content viewable
2 by other users of the platform;
3 (ii) is designed to connect users in order to allow users to interact
4 socially with each other within the service or application; and
5 (iii) has a monthly average of at least 25,000 active users in
6 Vermont.
7 (B) A social media platform does not include a service or application
8 if the primary or exclusive function of the platform is to provide electronic
9 mail or direct messaging services or to enable users to play video games.
10 § 2497d. PROHIBITED PRACTICES
11 (a) It shall be an unfair or deceptive act or practice in commerce in
12 violation of section 2453 of this chapter for a social media company to use any
13 design feature on a social media platform that the company knew, or by the
14 exercise of reasonable care should have known, is harmful.
15 (b) The Attorney General may adopt by rule specific design features that
16 constitute unfair or deceptive conduct under this section, including with respect
17 to algorithmic recommendation systems, infinite scrolling, status metrics, push
18 notifications, ephemeral content, and autoplay features.
19 (c) A social media company shall not be deemed to have violated
20 subsection (a) of this section if the Attorney General finds that the company:
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1 (1) demonstrates that it conducts quarterly audits of the design features
2 of its social media platform to determine whether they are harmful and hires an
3 independent third party to conduct an annual audit of the design features of its
4 social media platform to determine whether they are harmful; and
5 (2) if an audit determines that a design feature is harmful, the company
6 has corrected the design feature within 30 days after the completion of the
7 audit.
8 (d) Nothing in this section shall be construed to impose liability on a social
9 media company for:
10 (1) content that is generated, uploaded, or shared on its social media
11 platform by a user of the platform;
12 (2) content that is created solely by a third party and passively displayed
13 by the social media platform;
14 (3) information or content for which the social media platform was not,
15 in whole or in part, responsible for creating or developing; or
16 (4) conduct involving child users that would otherwise be protected
17 under 47 U.S.C. § 230, the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, or
18 Chapter I, Article 13 of the Vermont Constitution.
19 § 2497e. CERTIFICATE OF COMPLIANCE; COMPANY REGISTRY
20 (a) A social media company shall not operate a social media platform in
21 Vermont without a valid certificate of social media safety compliance. The VT LEG #372241 v.4
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1 Attorney General shall develop and maintain on a publicly available, easily
2 accessible website a registry comprising all companies certified under this
3 section.
4 (b) The Attorney General shall develop a process by which a social media
5 company may certify its compliance with the social media safety requirements
6 of this subchapter.
7 § 2497f. CONSUMER COMPLAINTS; RECORDS
8 (a) For the purpose of creating a single location within State government
9 for the receipt and tracking of consumer complaints regarding social media
10 platforms and any harmful effects on child users, the Attorney General, in
11 consultation with the Commissioners of Health and of Mental Health, shall
12 establish and implement a protocol for handling such complaints. The protocol
13 shall include a process for maintaining a database that aggregates and tracks
14 the number, nature, disposition status, and resolution time of complaints
15 received directly by State government or indirectly from records submitted to
16 the Attorney General under subsection (b) of this section. A summary of the
17 complaints received shall be reported to the General Assembly in the annual
18 supervision report required by section 2497m of this subchapter.
19 (b) Beginning on January 1, 2025, a social media company shall maintain a
20 complete record of any consumer complaints received regarding the design
21 features of its social media platform and any harmful effects on child users.
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1 The record shall include the total number of complaints received, the nature of
2 each complaint, the disposition of each complaint, the time it took to process
3 and resolve each complaint, and any other relevant information requested by
4 the Attorney General. Beginning on or before January 1, 2026, a company
5 shall include in its annual report required by subsection 2497g(b) of this
6 subchapter a copy of the record of complaints for the preceding year.
7 (c) As used in this section, “complaint” means any communication
8 primarily expressing a grievance.
9 § 2497g. MONITORING; COMPANY REPORT
10 (a) The Attorney General, with input from the Commissioners of Health
11 and of Mental Health, shall research and routinely monitor the design features
12 of social media platforms and assess their effect, positive or negative, on child
13 users. In addition, the Attorney General shall monitor the degree of
14 competition among social media companies in Vermont and how it effects
15 users of social media platforms, particularly with respect to user-engagement
16 options, as well as growth and innovation in the industry, generally.
17 (b) To assist the Attorney General with carrying out the purpose of this
18 section, on or before January 1, 2025, and annually thereafter, a social m