Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell (D) unveiled legislation Friday that would ban cellphones in schools and require social media companies to verify their users’ ages, the latest state push to combat youth phone addiction and online harms.
“By restricting cellphones during the school day and raising the bar for social media companies, we are taking bold steps to create learning environments free from distraction and a digital landscape that prioritizes the well-being of our youth,” Campbell said in a statement announcing the legislation.
The bill would require Massachusetts school districts to implement “bell-to-bell” limits on the use of cell phones and other personal electronic devices. It would also mandate that school districts teach students about the “social, emotional and physical harms” of social media.
The second part of the bill would impose a series of mandates on social media platforms, including that they ascertain a user’s age and disable certain account features for minors such as autoplay and endless scroll.
The companies would also have to set higher privacy settings by default for minors, block notifications during certain hours of the day, and allow users to flag unwanted content. The platforms would also have to post regular warnings to users about social media’s harmful effects of, something U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy has called for.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta (D) is also sponsoring social media warning label legislation this year.
Elements of the Massachusetts legislation, including restrictions on “addictive” features, mirror laws previously passed in both blue and red states, including California, New York and Utah.
Its sponsors are Sen. Julian Cyr (D) and Reps. Alice Hanlon Peisch (D) and Kate Lipper-Garabedian (D).
“By creating a ‘bell-to-bell’ policy, we’re giving students the opportunity to engage with their education unfettered by digital distraction,” Cyr said in a statement.
“The STUDY Act will protect kids on social media platforms with enhanced privacy safeguards against addictive feeds and content,” Lipper-Garabedian said.
The Massachusetts legislation reinforces that state policymakers are unwilling to back down from efforts to regulate social media despite tech industry lawsuits and a series of court-imposed injunctions.
If anything, state legislative efforts are picking up steam in 2025 while federal attempts to regulate the industry have stalled with the recent demise of the Kids Online Safety Act.
Read more: New social media regulation proposals are on tap in states
So is the push to ban cell phones in schools, which eight states have done since 2023. Bills have been introduced in more than a dozen more states.
Governors from both parties have used their state of the state addresses to call for restrictions on phones in schools, including Arkansas’s Sarah Huckabee Sanders (R), Nebraska’s Jim Pillen (R) and New Jersey’s Phil Murphy (D).
Read more: Push to restrict cellphones in schools ramps up
The Nebraska school cellphone proposal is part of a package aimed at disrupting the relationship between minors, their devices and the online world.
One of the bills, from Sen. Carolyn Bosn (R), would enact an Age-Appropriate Design Code, similar to laws passed in California and Maryland. The design code requires higher privacy settings by default and other protections for online services that children are likely to access.
Another Nebraska bill would require parental permission for minors to have a social media account, an idea that has gained traction in multiple states in recent years. The tech industry has succeeded in blocking most of those laws on First Amendment grounds. But lawmakers are unbowed.
A parental permission bill for youth less than 16 years old appears on a fast track in the Indiana Senate. A bill in Wyoming would require parental approval for anyone under 18 to have a social media account.