States Push Children’s Privacy Laws Forward, Even as Courts Keep Narrowing the Lines | Insights
States Push Children’s Privacy Laws Forward, Even as Courts Keep Narrowing the Lines | Insights
https://www.hklaw.com/en/insights/publications/2026/04/states-push-childrens-privacy-laws-forward
Publish Date: 2026-04-15 03:00:00
Source Domain: www.hklaw.com
Children’s online privacy remains one of the busiest fronts in state regulation. What’s changing in 2026 is not the pace of bills but the precision courts are demanding when those bills regulate product design, data use and access to content.
States continue to advance children’s online privacy and “age-appropriate design” laws even as industry plaintiffs repeatedly challenge them on First Amendment, vagueness and federal preemption grounds. Most of the major challenges now cluster around two recurring theories: 1) First Amendment arguments that “duty of care,” “best interests” or harm-prevention mandates operate as content-based speech restrictions triggering strict scrutiny, and 2) vagueness arguments that use terms like “compulsive usage,” “materially detrimental” and “well-being” fail to provide fair notice to businesses.
Recent developments – including South Carolina’s Social Media Regulation Act (House Bill 3431), the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit’s mixed ruling narrowing the injunction against California’s Age-Appropriate Design Code (AADC) Act, and continued spread of App Store Accountability Acts amid immediate legal headwinds – illustrate the central tension facing companies: They must plan for more state activity and more uncertainty about which provisions will ultimately stick.
South Carolina’s Social Media Regulation Act: An Aggressive Design Code Variant Meets Immediate Litigation
South Carolina is the latest state to enact an age-appropriate design code (AADC) law. Although the title targets “social media,” the statute reaches a broad set of covered online services and introduces several features that materially increase compliance and enforcement risk: a “reasonable care” duty to prevent specified harms to minors, potential personal exposure for certain officers and employees, mandatory third-party audits with public reporting and an immediate effective date with no compliance runway.
At its core, South Carolina’s…
