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Idaho Legislature – VOTE NO on H0542 - Harms from addictive social media (Posted: 02/01/26). Last update 02/14/26 🆕
Link: legislature.idaho.gov/s…
See bill link above for current status and committee assignment
See Idaho Insider for links where you can send group emails based on current status and committee assignment: gemstatechronicle.com/l…
Summary (ai assisted)
H0542 (aka “Stop Harms from Addictive Social Media Act”) is a complex, highly detailed bill that adds a new Chapter 21 to Title 48 of the Idaho Code. Key provisions (more details below):
Defines a complicated set of terms.
ED NOTE Substack Note space limitations prevent our listing details, but trust us — they are lengthy and onerous.)Requires covered platforms to estimate account holder ages after specified usage triggers using existing data.
Mandates birth date collection, verifiable parental consent for child accounts, default private settings, and restrictions on addictive features and profile-based paid commercial advertising for children.
Provides account termination procedures.
Creates private rights of action with damages and attorney general enforcement.
Prohibits waivers.
Includes severability clause: Invalid applications do not affect valid ones, and valid applications remain in force.
Fiscal Impact: No expected fiscal impact.
Constitutional Issues:
No direct contradictions with US Constitution or Idaho Constitution.
Incorporates federal Children's Online Privacy Protection Rule (COPPA) definitions (15 U.S.C. 6501, tinyurl.com/e39vvame) for parental consent and personal information
Includes detailed severability clause to preserve valid applications if any are found unconstitutional.
Key Definitions (alphabetic order, details omitted)
Account holder
Addictive interface features
Child
Covered social media platform
First trigger date
Minor
Personal information
Profile-based feed
Profile-based paid commercial advertising
Second trigger date
Social media platform
Verifiable parental consent
Age Estimation and Identification of Children
Within 14 days of first trigger date, platforms must use existing data to estimate age; if 80% or higher confidence that account holder is 16 or older, treat as non-child; otherwise treat as child.
Within 14 days of second trigger date, revise estimate with 90% or higher confidence threshold.
After second trigger date, update estimates after every additional 100 hours of use or when applying data analytics/AI to other demographics, whichever is shorter.
No obligation to estimate age for accounts held continuously for at least seven years.
No duty to request, collect, or retain new information; estimates derive from ordinary course of operations data.
Limitations and Requirements for Social Media Accounts for Children
Platforms must require birth date in account applications.
No account creation or term changes for children without verifiable parental consent sufficient for a binding minor contract under Idaho law; consent data limited in use and deleted promptly.
ED NOTE How can users be sure data is limited and deleted?Child accounts default to most private privacy settings; changes require verifiable parental consent while account holder remains a child.
When obtaining consent, platforms must offer separate parental password enabling time monitoring, daily/weekly limits, and access time restrictions.
Platforms shall not present addictive interface features or profile-based paid commercial advertising in child accounts or feeds.
Continuing obligation to terminate child accounts without verifiable parental consent.
Accounts of minors must be terminated within 7 days of holder request or 14 days of parent request (with verification).
Platforms must provide easy means for parents to request termination.
Termination notices for age classification include 30 days to dispute via commercially reasonable age verification; final termination occurs within 7 days of determination if required.
Remedies and Enforcement
Pardon us but we don’t understand the legalese.
Any account opened or continued for a child without verifiable parental consent results in invalid and unenforceable contracts (including arbitration, liability limits), contrary to public policy.
Children or parents have a private right of action for declaratory/ injunctive relief, damages (including mental health/emotional distress), costs, fees, and other relief for negligent, reckless, or knowing violations.
Reckless/knowing violations allow greater of actual damages or $10,000 statutory damages; consistent patterns allow punitive damages.
No liability if reasonable efforts made using available technology and possessed data.
Actions must be brought within 3 years of discovery.
Knowing or reckless violations constitute unfair practices under Idaho Code § 48-603 (tinyurl.com/2rrum64p); attorney general may investigate and enforce.
Exclusions and Waiver Prohibited
Pardon us but we don’t understand the legalese.
Does not limit parental content choices for children or online search engine results beyond other laws.
Any waiver or limitation of chapter prohibitions, requirements, or remedies by a minor or parent is unlawful, contrary to public policy, void ab initio (has no legal effect), and unenforceable.
Reason for Recommendation to VOTE NO
This complicated bill attempts to replace parents with complex algorithms and legalese that do little to improve online safety while expanding the surveillance state to the extreme. Parents and their children (with guidance from parents) must exercise judgment and critical thinking about online computer use. No amount of legislation and regulation is superior to or should ever supersede parents authority and responsibility for their own kids.
Even the most well-educated conscientious parents won’t be able to read and understand all the provisions of this Act. So what will they do? What everyone does: Ignore the terms and conditions section, click on through, grant permission, and get demanding kids out of their hair.
Idaho Senator Brian Lenney wrote an excellent bottom line for this bill. We agree 100% with his analysis, including this statement:
“Don’t give them a smartphone until they’re older. Give them a flip phone if they need to stay in touch. Say no to social media and actually enforce it. Check their devices regularly. Keep phones out of bedrooms at night.”
This goes for adults too. Dump smartphones, which surveil you 24/7. Use a flip phone for communication. Use home laptops, desktop computers, or tablets to “surf the net.” Parents did it years ago before smart phones existed, and parents — and their kids — will survive and thrive without smart phones.
The requirements for online platforms are so onerous, one likely outcome is that these platforms simply won’t be offered in Idaho. Also, this bill provides for large platforms generating at least $1 billion in worldwide advertising revenues in one or more of the preceding three years. However, it does not address smaller ones, which could present all the same problems as big ones.
How do these platforms verify who is the parent? Do they collect more data on adults that can be hacked or leaked? (No database, not government, not nonprofit, not corporate is secure, unhackable, or immune to being leaked.)
Social media, while helpful for research and some basic communications, remains harmful, addictive, and a HUGE time waster too. It literally has made people crazy, willing to bash anyone they know or don’t know.
We need to return to personal responsibility, proper parenting, in-person interactions, and non-digital tools (like books, handwritten notes, outdoor play, etc.)
Eight more points Senator Lenney made, with which we agree wholeheartedly (quoted with minor changes from his article):
Gives parents zero new power: Parents already can control whether their kids have a phone and social media.
Has easy workarounds: Kids can access social media through friends’ phones, web browsers, and all other methods bill doesn’t cover.
7-year exemption will backfire: Because a kid who lied about their age at 10 gets zero protections by age 17 (those kids are on platforms the longest).
Has a 30-day loophole: Legally the platforms must notify before termination, which means the kid keeps using it during the “dispute period.”
Is compliance theater: Platforms will build expensive systems while algorithms keep serving addictive content that falls just outside statutory definitions.
Solves the wrong problem: Platforms monitor because parents won’t.
Lets social media companies win anyway: They’ll spend millions on lawyers and compliance, not fixing harms their algorithms cause.
Treats symptoms not causes: The bill regulates features while ignoring the fact that parents hand kids unrestricted access to “the world’s most sophisticated drug delivery device.”
Bottom Line: No legislation can take the place of responsible parents. Technology will change to take advantage of or create loopholes. Lawyers will litigate for their well-paying big platform clients. Clever and even not-so-clever kids will thwart the bill’s good intentions. And surveillance on kids and adults will expand, leaving everyone open to privacy violations, data hacks, and leaks.
Please kill this bill and others like it. VOTE NO, please.
Related
Why are we doin this, Idaho? tinyurl.com/3u5y498f
Does Idaho HB 542 "Replace" Parents? Spoiler alert: yep, it sure does. By Senator Brian Lenney (01/31/26): tinyurl.com/n44nnfx4
Resources > Protect Your Privacy (Substack article subsection): tinyurl.com/2arybmrc
Idaho Legislature 2026 Bills to Support or Oppose: tinyurl.com/yc2jpkeh
