Several U.S. states are pushing to ban young people from social media entirely. This marks the latest wave of censorship bills masquerading as “children’s online safety” measures, with states like Massachusetts , Idaho , Minnesota , North Carolina , South Carolina , Illinois , and EFF’s home state of California leading the charge. Just a few years ago, lawmakers supporting age-gating laws insisted their efforts were narrowly targeted at limiting young people’s access to adult content. At the time, we warned that they would not stop there : once the government established the authority and built the infrastructure to collect and “verify” massive troves of user data, it would inevitably sweep broader and broader categories of lawful speech into this mass surveillance and censorship system.  Unfortunately, our predictions came true. As legislators across the country advance proposals that would block all young people from accessing the “ modern public square ,” the Overton window has  shifted dramatically towards mass censorship—and the speed of this shift should concern all of us.  This primer breaks down this dangerous wave of social media bans: how they work (and why they don’t), who they harm, and how we can fight back.  How to Spot a Social Media Ban The details of these bills vary from state to state. Some (like California’s AB 1709 ) are a flat-out social media ban for all young people under a certain age, while other states (like South Carolina and Minnesota) allow access to young users who hand over even more data to show verifiable parental consent . Many bills regulate certain social media features, too, including by setting default privacy settings, time limits, or notification preferences for all accounts that fail the age-gate. As for the age-gating mechanism itself, most proposals fall into two broad categories: age verification bills and behavioral age estimation bills.  Age Verification Bills require online serv