Teaching kids digital literacy beats unconstitutional mandates and endless lawsuits.
For parents navigating the rise of social media and smartphones, protecting teenagers from harmful content has become an urgent concern.
The challenge is particularly acute for those who didn’t grow up with these technologies and often feel further removed from the digital world. Naturally, legislators across the political spectrum have responded. Unfortunately, their well-intentioned proposals routinely make matters worse.
After courts nationwide struck down social media age-verification mandates as unconstitutional, legislators found a new target: app stores. Rather than abandon their crusade, they simply moved the compliance burden from platforms to Apple and Google. The approach has proven popular — Texas, Utah, and Louisiana enacted such laws last year, with more states poised to follow.
But litigation in Texas exposed the same constitutional flaws.
A federal judge warned that the law “restricts access to a vast universe of speech by requiring Texans to prove their age before downloading a mobile app or accessing paid content within those apps and requires minors to obtain parental consent.” The measure is now enjoined — precisely the outcome Alabama should expect if it follows suit.
The only winners? Lawyers, who can count on drawn-out litigation while taxpayers foot the bill, and teenagers remain just as vulnerable as before. An unconstitutional bill protects nobody.
If platform-level age verification has been struck down in multiple venues, and app store restrictions appear equally unconstitutional, legislators face a more fundamental question: What can — and should — government do to protect teenagers in the digital world? The good news is that constitutional approaches exist; they’re just less politically satisfying than banner legislation and the desire for legislators to “do something” on a hot-button issue.
Two years ago, Florida took a different approach: requiring public schools to teach social media literacy. The curriculum covers the mental health risks of social media, the permanence of shared content, and, critically, how to identify predatory behavior and human trafficking tactics. Unlike age-verification mandates, this measure faced no constitutional challenges. More importantly, it’s equipping a generation of Floridians to navigate online spaces safely without restricting anyone’s speech. Additionally, it preserved parents’ authority without ceding it to distant boardrooms in Silicon Valley.
Other states have taken notice. Tennessee, Georgia, and North Carolina have enacted similar measures—and in some cases expanded them. It’s a refreshing reminder that good policy doesn’t require federal mandates or constitutional crises to spread across state lines.
Age-verification schemes attempt to solve parenting problems with surveillance technology — and create new government enforcement powers that guarantee years of litigation. Social media literacy education actually prepares young people for the digital world they’ll inherit by using existing schools to teach critical thinking.Consider what Florida’s approach accomplishes. It doesn’t just protect teenagers from specific platforms or apps—it gives them transferable skills they’ll use for life. A fifteen-year-old who learns to recognize manipulative content or predatory behavior carries that knowledge across every digital space they’ll ever encounter. They’ll spot deepfakes, identify scams, and understand when they’re being exploited for engagement metrics. These aren’t skills that expire when someone turns eighteen or switches from one app to another.
Social media literacy education also respects the reality that parents, not state bureaucrats or tech companies, should make decisions about their children’s online lives. It provides families with information and tools rather than imposing blanket restrictions that treat every teenager and every family identically. Some parents may decide certain platforms are off-limits until their children reach a certain age. Others may allow supervised access earlier. Education supports both approaches; mandates override them.
Legislators face a choice. They can chase the political theater of age-verification mandates, waste taxpayer money on doomed litigation, and accomplish nothing for the teenagers they claim to protect.
Or they can follow Florida’s lead and invest in education that actually works. The constitutional path forward exists. The question is whether legislators have the courage to take it.
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Dr. Edward Longe is the director of national strategy and the Center for Technology and Innovation at The James Madison Institute.
