By WRAL News staff
North Carolina lawmakers are scheduled to debate a bill Tuesday that would ban social media accounts for children under 14 and require parental permission for children who are 14 and 15 years old.
The companies that own social media platforms such as TikTok, Facebook and Instagram say they already have a minimum age of 13 to create an account, in compliance with federal law. But some children can easily get around the bans, both with and without their parents’ consent, and many younger kids have social media accounts.
House Bill 301 would hold the social media companies responsible for stopping them, with the state fining them up to $50,000 for each time a younger teen slips through the cracks and is able to set up an account against the rules. Families of those teens would also be allowed to sue the companies over violations, for up to $10,000.
The bill is scheduled for a hearing in a House committee Tuesday. Lobbyists for companies that own TikTok, Facebook and Instagram didn’t provide comments on the proposal last week when reached by WRAL News.
The use of social media among teens is nearly universal in the U.S. and many other parts of the world. Up to 95% of youth ages 13 to 17 in the U.S. report using a social media platform, with more than one-third saying they use social media “almost constantly,” according to the Pew Research Center.
Not all websites in which people can interact with others would be subject to the bans.
Email sites, news websites with comment sections, and others — such as apps that let people share texts, photos or videos with individuals or groups, but not publicly — would also be exempt from the ban.
Social media companies have been targeted by North Carolina officials in the past. North Carolina and 32 other states last year sued Meta Platforms Inc., which owns Facebook and Instagram, alleging that the social media company has contributed to a youth mental health crisis by knowingly designing features on its Instagram and Facebook platforms to addict children to its platforms.
Democratic North Carolina Gov. Josh Stein was the state’s attorney general when the lawsuit was filed. As governor, he would have to sign off on any North Carolina bill restricting social media use. When the lawsuit was filed, Stein said Meta lied to parents about the risks its social media platforms posed against children.
Meta said at the time that it was committed to providing teens with safe experiences online, and that it had introduced more than two dozen tools to support teens and their families.
Some measures social platforms have taken to address concerns about children’s mental health can be easily circumvented. TikTok introduced a default 60-minute time limit for users younger than 18, but many users were able to simply enter a passcode to keep watching after the limit was reached.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
The preceding article originally appeared on March 31, 2025 at WRAL’s website and is made available here for educational purposes only. This constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in Title 17 U.S.C. section 106A-117 of the U.S. Copyright Law. Any views or opinions expressed here are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Carolina Leadership Coalition.
