Gov. Spencer Cox speaks to reporters at the Capitol in Salt Lake City on the final night of the legislative session, Friday, March 1, 2024. (Photo by Spenser Heaps for Utah News Dispatch)

Meta recently announced a number of new default protections for Instagram accounts owned by minors, but Utah Governor Spencer Cox called the measures inadequate.

Cox helped lead the state’s effort to pass the law similar, standard restrictions on accounts of minors and on Tuesday he gave credit to Meta.

“While these are positive steps, we believe they do not go far enough to ensure the safety and well-being of Utah children online. We encourage Meta and all social media platforms to continue to innovate and implement even stronger protections for minors,” the governor said.

SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES IN YOUR INBOX

Called “Instagram Teen Accounts“The new policy makes teen accounts private by default, so only their followers can interact with them. The same goes for messaging, tagging, and mentioning.

Underage accounts are also subject to the strictest content restrictions, with videos featuring people fighting or promoting cosmetic surgery, for example, blocked from their “discover” pages.

Meta’s anti-bullying feature, “Hidden Words,” hides “offensive words and phrases” in comments and posts aimed at teens.

And a time limit reminder sends teens a message instructing them to exit the app if they’ve used it for more than 60 minutes that day, with a “sleep mode” muting notifications between 10pm and 7am.

“Utah has always been a leader in protecting our children in the digital age, and we appreciate Meta for taking a step in the right direction with the announcement of teen accounts. Many of these new features mirror our recently passed laws, which demonstrate a growing awareness of the responsibility social media companies have to their younger users,” Cox said.

Adopted during the 2024 legislative session, SB194 attempted to impose many of the same features that Meta announced on Tuesday, including limiting direct messages, visibility and sharing features to the user’s “friends.”

The law went a step further, disabling features that lead to “excessive use,” such as autoplay, push notifications and “perpetual scrolling.”

It would also have allowed parents or guardians to manage their children’s accounts, giving them the ability to override state-mandated defaults. And companies would be blocked from collecting and selling data tied to minors’ accounts.

Utah’s law was based on a requirement that social media companies verify the age of all users so they could identify accounts belonging to minors. That’s where Meta’s new policy falls short, state officials said Tuesday.

“For these safety features to be truly effective, quality age assurance is a critical component. Through our ongoing investigations and litigation, we will continue to pressure social media companies to implement robust age assurance processes and remove addictive features when interacting with minors,” said Margaret Busse, executive director of the Utah Department of Commerce.

In a lawsuitThe trade association NetChoice, which represents companies including Google, Meta and X, alleged that Utah’s law violated the First and 14th Amendments. The same allegations were made in a similar lawsuit from several Utah activists and social media users, who also said the laws violate the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits states from interfering with commerce across state lines.

Last week, U.S. District Judge Robert Shelby partly on the side of the groupsand ruled that the laws likely violated the First Amendment. The restrictions were set to go into effect on October 1, but Shelby granted a motion for a preliminary injunction, staying the law while the lawsuit played out.

DONATE: SUPPORT NEWS YOU TRUST