Facebook backs efforts in Pierre to limit youth access to social media

Idea has blessing of several advocacy groups, Meta

State lawmakers listen to testimony from Meta representatives during a committee hearing at the State Capitol. (Austin Goss/The Dakota Scout)

PIERRE — State lawmakers will be looking at measures intended to limit children’s access to social media and pornography when they return to Pierre in January.

The Summer Study Committee on Artificial Intelligence and Internet Regulation for Minors took hours of testimony Wednesday overwhelmingly in favor of changes to how South Dakota kids currently access content online.

Among those in favor of changes was Meta — parent company of popular social media sites Facebook and Instagram — who is undergoing a series of alterations aimed at limiting children’s online experience. They include the launching of “teen accounts” for their websites, which would require underage users to link their accounts to their parents, giving parents more control over their settings and usage capacity. Parents will also be able to limit what time of day their kids can use the accounts, and Meta will automatically set any under 18 user accounts to “private.”

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