The Iowa House has voted to require teenagers to have a parent’s permission to use social media accounts.
If the bill becomes law, social media companies must give a parent access to their minor child’s Instagram, SnapChat or other accounts and the ability to shut down those accounts. Federal law currently prohibits anyone under the age of 13 from having their own social media account.
“I believe this is an important step forward for parental rights in Iowa,” Representative Charley Thomson of Charles City said. “It still permits parents to have some supervision over their children, while the children can have the social media accounts with monitoring.”
Thomson said some teens have been harassed on social media and subjected to what’s called “sexploitation” on social media — without their parent’s knowledge and with devastating consequences.
“It’s a very sad situation…almost a homicide, because some of these bad actors have to encouraged he suicide victims to commit suicide,” Thomson said.
The bill passed the House on an 88-6 vote and goes to the Senate for review. The House approved another bill targeting the use of artificial intelligence to embed real images into pornographic content. Representative Helena Hayes of New Sharon said they’re commonly called “deep fakes.”
“These A.I. generated images are a more modern take on revenge porn without a defendant needed to obtain compromising photographs of the intended victim,” Hayes said.
The House unanimously approved a separate bill to specifically crack down on deep fakes that manipulate the images of children.