Law / United States / 
Massachusetts
S.3164 (2026), An Act protecting children from addictive social media feeds
Senate Bill No. 3164, 194th General Court
A social media and minors rule binding private bodies.
- Covered services
- Social media platforms accessible to minors in Massachusetts.
- How the hook was established
- express
- What makes it apply
- User location
- Verification methods
- Self declaration, Third party service
- Audit expectation
- none
What it requires
- On social media platforms accessible to minors in Massachusetts, disable by default algorithmic feeds, autoplay, infinite scroll, and other addictive design features on minors' accounts.
- Send reminders after extended use.
- Turn off notifications overnight.
- Use an age verification method; it need not rely solely on government issued identification.
These lines are LexLint's reading of the law's text.
Who enforces it
Enforcement body
Massachusetts Attorney General
Settledness
Section 3(a) of the bill directs the attorney general to promulgate regulations identifying commercially reasonable and technically feasible methods for covered operators to determine if a user is a covered minor.
- As of
- Open questions
- What makes a service one that "primarily serves as a medium for displaying content generated by users through a social media feed" under General Laws chapter 93M, section 1, as Senate No. 3164 would insert it, for a service whose main function is messaging or video calling and that also shows a feed?
- When is any user-to-user communication or user-generated content "incidental to such commercial transactions" under the online marketplace exclusion from "social media platform" in General Laws chapter 93M, section 1, as Senate No. 3164 would insert it, for a marketplace that also runs a community feed?
What it makes you log
Who may demand the log
Regulator
What the log must hold
Age assurance result
Log retention
Section 3(d)(iii) directs the Attorney General's regulations to require deletion of personal data collected to determine whether a user is a covered minor, other than the age determination itself, immediately after the determination.
- As of
- Basis
- Fixed
- Prohibits retaining
- Information collected to obtain verifiable parental consent to change a minor's geolocation default, which must be deleted immediately after an attempt to obtain the consent, except where needed to comply with state or federal law
Logging duty
Section 4 requires a covered operator to give the Attorney General de-identified aggregate data on minors' use of the platform at least quarterly, including the number of minors by age range, their time on the platform and how often their default settings change, and the Attorney General is to publish it. The report cannot be produced without records of age determinations and usage, but the bill names no log, contents or retention period, and section 3(d) leaves age assurance method rules to regulations that must require deletion of age-determination data immediately after the determination.
- Kind
- Implicit
- As of
- Provision
- Chapter 93M as inserted by section 1 of Senate No. 3164, section 4
- Trigger
- age_assurance
What this law does
Would require social media platforms to disable, by default, algorithmic feeds, autoplay, infinite scroll, and other addictive design features on minors' accounts, send reminders after extended use, and turn off notifications overnight. Requires an age verification method that need not rely solely on government issued identification. Passed the Senate 38 to 2 on , and is now before the House, which took a different under-14 ban approach in its own bill.
When LexLint raises it
When your app profile says your app operates a social platform.
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