Bill > HB2991

This bill, titled "Social media; online content; minors," aims to protect minors from certain online content and social media practices by amending Arizona law. It introduces new definitions for terms like "account holder," "daily active users," "infinite scrolling," "resident," and "social media platform," with a social media platform being defined as an online service with user-generated content, algorithms, and features like infinite scrolling or push notifications, and a significant percentage of users under sixteen spending considerable time on it. The bill mandates that social media platforms cannot allow minors under fourteen to create accounts without parental or guardian consent and requires platforms to terminate accounts of minors under fourteen, providing a ninety-day dispute period, and also allows minors under fourteen to request account termination within five business days, with parents or guardians having ten business days to request termination, all while ensuring personal information is deleted unless legally required. For minors aged fourteen and fifteen, accounts will be terminated if parental consent is not given, with similar dispute and termination processes. Furthermore, the bill requires commercial entities that publish or distribute material "harmful to minors" (defined by existing law) on websites or applications with a substantial portion of such content to implement age verification methods, either "anonymous age verification" (conducted by an independent third party not owned by foreign entities) or "standard age verification" (approved by the commercial entity), and to protect any personal identifying information used for verification.