Article By Ken Macon
Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker has signed the Children’s Social Media Safety Act, a law that takes the age check off individual websites and builds it into the device.
We obtained a copy of the law for you here.
It gives the state a say in what time minors are allowed to receive notifications. It’s also similar to what California is up to and also to what some senators want to extend nationwide. Starting in 2028, House Bill 5511 requires internet-enabled devices, operating systems and app stores to ask for the primary user’s birth date or age during account setup. The device then tells websites, apps, and online services which bracket that user falls into, whether under 13, 13 to 15, 16 to 17, or 18 and older.
Covered services must use the bracket to set default protections for users under 18. Algorithmic feeds are off for minors without “verifiable parental consent,” and their feeds can show only content they search for, posts from accounts they follow, and direct messages.
Feed notifications are blocked between 10 p.m. and 7 a.m., precise location data is shielded, and minors need parental sign-off for what the bill calls “gifted currency” exchanges.
The governor’s office says the law reaches Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, Snapchat, X and gaming platforms like Roblox. Traditional news media, broadband providers, email services and learning management systems are exempt.
The age declaration happens once, at setup, and then follows the user everywhere. NetChoice testified that Section 10 “mandates that device manufacturers and operating system providers collect birth dates, ages and age bracket data from all users, and share that information with covered developers through digital signals.” All users include adults. An adult setting up a new phone in Illinois states an age so the operating system can vouch for it to any covered service, and the company that ships the operating system becomes the gatekeeper.
Lawmakers passed the bill unanimously and Pritzker made it one of his top priorities for the spring session. “Big social media companies have intentionally designed their platforms to keep kids online for as long as possible,” he said at the signing in Chicago. House sponsor Jennifer Gong-Gershowitz, D-Glenview, said attention spans are shrinking, depression rates are rising and kids are “sacrificing sleep to scroll long past when they should be asleep.”
The governor’s office says companies already have the age-check technology and that doing the check at device setup spares apps from demanding IDs or facial recognition. Parents set a child’s age during setup, according to the office, and the setting adjusts algorithmic feeds, profile visibility and how adult strangers can interact with the child. NetChoice’s testimony says the model breaks wherever a device has more than one user. Minors use shared devices, borrowed equipment and school computers, the group said, and the bill gives platforms no reliable way to tell which user is on the screen. The device answers with the primary user’s bracket, whoever is actually holding it.
Attorney General Kwame Raoul, who has joined lawsuits against Meta and TikTok alleging the companies built addictive designs that exploit children, will enforce the law. The governor’s office puts civil penalties at up to $50,000 per violation, while Capitol News Illinois reports fines of up to $2,500 per child for accidental violations and up to $7,500 per child for deliberate ones. The two accounts disagree, and the reporting leaves the difference unexplained.
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