Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders continues to sign bills passed earlier this year by the Arkansas General Assembly. On Tuesday, she signed into law the “Social Media Safety Act” which aims to prevent underage children in Arkansas from setting up social media accounts without obtaining parental permission.

“As a parent, this is a very personal thing,” Sanders said. “I have a ten-year-old, a nine-year-old and a seven-year-old.” The governor said she was concerned about the increase in depression among teenagers, and that the bill was the start of “great steps in protecting the young people of Arkansas.”

The law also requires adult social media users in Arkansas to provide a digital copy of their ID for purposes of age verification. That only applies to new accounts and is not applicable to companies like Amazon and Google which would not qualify as social media under the act.

https://www.ualrpublicradio.org/local-regional-news/2023-04-13/arkansas-governor-signs-social-media-regulation-bill

KUAR | By Josie Lenora

A bill pushed by Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders to regulate children on social media passed an Arkansas legislative committee Tuesday.

The Social Media Safety Act would require Arkansans to show a photo ID before setting up a new account. If the bill becomes law, minors would also need express consent from their parents to set up a social media account.

Republican Sen. Tyler Dees explained it like this. “The process would be a third-party verifier that the social media site would contract with. They would verify the age and then they would dump that data. At that point, they would be able to give consent for a new profile to be created.”

https://www.ualrpublicradio.org/local-regional-news/2023-03-29/social-media-photo-id-bill-passes-arkansas-committee