SC House passes bill requiring parental consent for social media

COLUMBIA — A bill requiring children to get permission from their parents before signing up for social media profiles passed the House on Wednesday.

As the state House debated, Rep. Brandon Guffey, R-Rock Hill, testified in front of a U.S. Senate committee about his son’s suicide over a sextortion scam.

Under the proposal representatives passed 90-17, parents would have to give consent for their children to create a social media account. And social media companies would have to put safeguards in place for children using their platforms, such as limiting who can message them and what they can see.

A similar bill passed the House 113-1 last year. This time around, legislators raised concerns over parental rights, privacy concerns and a requirement that the state create educational programs about social media.

Another perfunctory vote, expected Thursday, will send the bill to the Senate, which did not take up last year’s similar version.

House debate

Representatives agreed that overuse of social media can be a problem for children’s mental health. The question became whether it should be up to legislators to control how people use social media.

“Why does the government need to do what any parent can already do, given the evils of social media?” said House Minority Leader Todd Rutherford, D-Columbia. “We agree they’re evil, but if they’re evil and you’re a parent, why don’t you do it?”

As technology rapidly develops, parents who didn’t grow up with the same challenges are overwhelmed trying to protect their children, said Rep. Travis Moore, a sponsor on the bill.

“These are not issues parents individually can handle, in my opinion,” the Roebuck Republican replied.

The proposal would affect more than just parents, said Rep. Justin Bamberg, D-Bamberg.

Social media sites would be required to verify the ages of everyone making an account in order to prevent people under the age of 18 from signing up.

Bamberg, the only “no” vote last year, said that lead to adults needing to provide personal information to social media companies.

“I ain’t giving my Social Security number to anybody to have a damn Facebook,” Bamberg said. “I don’t believe in that.”

But Moore said there’s nothing in the bill requiring that. Verification won’t go that far, he said.

“Acceptable methods” listed in the bill for obtaining consent include providing a toll-free number for the parent to call, allowing the adult to respond to an email, coordinating a video conferencing call, or collecting information from a “government-issued identification of the minor’s parent,” then deleting it.

Bamberg proposed requiring companies create a separate platform for children to use, similar to YouTube Kids, a version of the video site designed for children. The child-friendly sites would require parental consent and put in place the safeguards required in the bill without requiring proof from adults, Bamberg said.

His proposed amendment failed 73-30.

Some of the representatives who changed their minds to oppose the bill included members of the ultra-conservative Freedom Caucus, who pointed to a section that would require the state Department of Education to develop programs teaching students how to safely use social media.

Rep. Jordan Pace, a Goose Creek Republican who leads the Freedom Caucus, attempted to remove that part of the bill, claiming that the educators involved in developing the curriculum might attempt to add liberal viewpoints.

That won’t happen with GOP Superintendent Ellen Weaver at the helm of the agency overseeing public K-12 schools, said Rep. John McCravy, a leader in the Legislature’s Family Caucus.

Before her 2022 election, Weaver led the conservative think tank Palmetto Promise Institute and before that, worked for former GOP U.S. Sen. Jim DeMint.

If the education department did create programs with which the Statehouse’s ruling Republicans disagreed, they have the power to intervene, said McCravy, R-Greenwood.

“I think it’s worth it to educate our children of the dangers that are on the internet, of the dangers that are on social media,” he said.

Legislators threw out Pace’s amendment 91-15.

Guffey’s testimony

At the same time as his colleagues were debating the bill, Guffey gave an emotional recounting of his son’s suicide to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee during a general discussion on protections for children online.

Guffey’s 17-year-old son, Gavin Guffey, died by suicide July 27, 2022. Guffey had sent explicit photos to an Instagram account he believed to be a young woman. The person running the account threatened to leak those photos unless Guffey continued to send him money.

A 24-year-old Nigerian man was brought to the U.S. last month to face federal charges of child exploitation resulting in death, child pornography distribution, coercion and enticement of a minor, cyberstalking resulting in death, and interstate threats with the intent to extort.

Meta, the company that owns Instagram and Facebook, removed the profile with which Guffey had been interacting but didn’t erase others believed to be connected, Rep. Guffey told the committee Wednesday.

Those accounts attempted to extort Gavin Guffey’s 16-year-old brother and 14-year-old cousin, the legislator said.

At one point, he received a message reading, “Did I tell you your son begged for his life?” the Rock Hill Republican told the committee.

“I vowed at that moment I would make it my life’s mission to protect children online and would not stop,” Guffey told the committee.

Since his son’s death, Brandon Guffey has done advocacy work relating to children’s internet safety.

In his two years of advocacy, he’s worked with families of about 40 teens who died by suicide after being sexually exploited on the internet.

He called online safety “the greatest threat to the next generation” and criticized Congress for not doing more to thwart it.

“Right now, we have too many politicians making decisions based on their next election and not enough leaders making decisions based on the next generation,” Guffey said.

SC Daily Gazette reporter Shaun Chornobroff contributed to this article.