Utah rewrote its social media age law once already

The short answer

Utah passed one of the first state laws requiring social media companies to verify users' ages and get parental consent for minors' accounts in 2023, then replaced it with a rewritten version in 2024 after legal challenges. As of the state's own current guidance, enforcement of the 2024 law is paused under a preliminary injunction, so the specific verification and consent duties are not currently being enforced even though the statute remains on the books.

What the evidence says

Governor Cox signed SB 152, the Social Media Regulation Act, on 23 March 2023, with a special effective date of 3 May 2023. The enrolled bill text required social media companies to verify a Utah resident's age when opening or maintaining an account, obtain a parent or guardian's consent before a resident under 18 could hold one, and restrict minors' accounts by blocking certain direct messages, excluding them from search results, removing advertising, and limiting access overnight, by default, between 10:30 p.m. and 6:30 a.m. Facing legal challenges, the legislature replaced that approach the next year. Governor Cox signed SB 194, the Utah Minor Protection in Social Media Act, on 13 March 2024; its enrolled text instead requires companies to verify a new account holder's age using an approved system, enable maximum default privacy settings on a minor's account, provide supervisory tools and parental consent mechanisms, protect minors' data confidentiality, and gives the state's Division of Consumer Protection enforcement power, with a safe harbour for approved age-assurance systems; most provisions were written to take effect 1 October 2024. The state's own consumer protection page, retrieved 16 September 2026, states that enforcement is currently stayed under a preliminary injunction, separate from unrelated lawsuits Utah has filed against platforms over alleged addictive design.

For context

A law being stayed by a court is not the same as being repealed or found unconstitutional; a preliminary injunction pauses enforcement while litigation continues, and the underlying legal questions, particularly around age verification and speech, remain open. The shift from a hard age-and-consent gate with a fixed curfew to a system built around approved verification and safe harbours shows the legislature adjusting its approach under legal pressure rather than abandoning the goal. Families should not assume either version is operating exactly as written.

A practical next step

Rather than expecting Utah's law to be actively enforced right now, it may be more useful to look at whatever age-verification or parental consent tools a platform already offers voluntarily, since those exist independent of this litigation.

• Do you know which age-verification or parental consent tools a platform your family uses already offers, regardless of state law?
• Would a default overnight access restriction, like the one Utah's 2023 law described, be useful in your household even without a legal mandate?
• Have you checked whether your own state has since proposed a similar law, and what its current status is?

Utah's two attempts illustrate how quickly this kind of legislation can move from enactment to courtroom pause, which is worth remembering before treating any single state's law as a settled model.