Social Media

After a U.S. Supreme Court ruling last month, Florida and tech-industry groups could be poised to resume a legal battle about a 2021 state law aimed at placing restrictions on social-media platforms.Attorneys for the groups NetChoice and the Computer & Communications Industry Association, which challenged the constitutionality of the law, have filed a motion at the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals arguing that new briefs should be filed in light of the Supreme Court decision.

Facing potential First Amendment challenges, Florida has proposed details about how it will carry out a new law aimed at keeping children off social-media platforms and blocking minors from accessing online pornography.Attorney General Ashley Moody’s office on Tuesday published three proposed rules that include addressing one of the most closely watched issues in the law: age verification.

Tim Love spent more than four decades in the world of global advertising. Since retiring in 2013, he has focused much of his attention on the way the online world operates today, and how it has been used to polarize us, and has greatly impacted mental health, particularly among young people. Love is author “Discovering Truth: How to Navigate Between Fact & Fiction in an Overwhelming Social Media World” and he’s host of a podcast called Tim Love's Discovering Truth where he interviews major players in the online and corporate world about the nature of truth and the trouble we find ourselves in.

With the state preparing for a legal challenge from the tech industry, Gov. Ron DeSantis on Monday signed a high-profile bill aimed at keeping children off social-media platforms.Lawmakers this month overwhelmingly passed the bill (HB 3), which House Speaker Paul Renner, R-Palm Coast, made a priority of the annual legislative session.

Two free sessions offered next week can help clarify how social media might be affecting your child.

Facebook, Messenger and Instagram were apparently offline Tuesday morning in a massive social media outage.News media around the world were reporting the outage with stories of users accounts suddenly going offline and attempts to reconnect thwarted.The service returned shortly after noon.

The Senate voted 30-5 to approve the plan (HB 3), three days after Gov. Ron DeSantis vetoed an earlier version (HB 1). DeSantis and House Speaker Paul Renner, who has made a priority of the social-media issue, negotiated the revamped plan.Renner, R-Palm Coast, and other supporters of restrictions contend that social media harms children’s mental health and can lead to sexual predators communicating with minors. The bill seeks to prevent children under age 16 from opening social-media accounts — though a key change in the revised version would allow parents to give consent for 14- and 15-year-olds to have accounts.

Florida’s Republican-led Senate passed a sweeping bill Thursday in Tallahassee that would ban all kids under 16 from using social media – even with a parent’s permission – and would require everyone else in the Sunshine State to prove they are adults to continue using their online accounts.Within hours, Gov. Ron DeSantis resurfaced his own objections over banning high school students who are 14 or 15 and whose parents might want to give their children access. “Parents need to have a role in this,” he said at a news conference. He added, “We can’t say 100% of the uses are bad.”

Young entrepreneurs and activists are worried about a Florida proposal to ban social media for all minors under 16 — even with consent of their parents. The bill passed the House last month and was expected to clear the Senate on Wednesday. Last week, a Senate panel passed the bill 12-5 with only one Democrat, Sen. Rosalind Osgood, D-Tamarac, voting in favor of it.