Florida AG Uthmeier proposes Safe Screens Act with overnight shutoff, app store age checks for teens

Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier on Thursday unveiled a legislative proposal he calls the Safe Screens Act, a package of rules that would require app stores to verify users' ages, shut teen social media accounts off overnight and during the school day, hide like counts by default and bar AI chatbots from posing as companions or humans when talking with minors. The plan is a proposal for the Legislature, not a law, and would need a sponsor and votes in the 2027 session before any of it could take effect.

The announcement comes nine days after a federal appeals court cleared Florida to enforce its 2024 law banning social media accounts for children under 14, and in the middle of a string of state lawsuits against Meta, Snap and Discord. Uthmeier framed the new plan as the next step beyond that law. "Parents deserve real control, and companies must design for safety, not addiction," he said, according to News 6 in Orlando. He added that the state already bars accounts for children under 14 and that "the Safe Screens Act goes further."

Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd joined Uthmeier for the announcement, which WFLA reported took place at Polk State College. Judd called the attorney general "a visionary" when it comes to protecting Florida children, according to the attorney general's office and news reports.

What the Safe Screens Act would require

The proposal, as described by Uthmeier's office and reported by News 6, WFLA and WFTV, reaches well beyond the account ban in current law. It targets the design of the apps teens use, not just whether they can sign up. The main provisions:

• App store age checks: App stores would have to determine a user's age, link a minor's account to a parent's account and get a parent's consent before a minor downloads or buys an app.
• Quiet mode: Social media platforms would block teen access from 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. year-round, and from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. on weekdays during the school year.
• Time limits: Use would be capped at two hours a day and 60 hours a month, with pauses at 60 and 90 minutes. WFTV reported the caps would apply to users ages 14 to 17; News 6 described the cap in connection with cosmetic filters, which would be disabled by default.
• Likes and comments: Like, comment and reaction counts would be hidden by default. Only a verified parent could turn them on, and the platform would prompt an opt-out every 30 days.
• Infinite scroll and autoplay: Both would be off by default and could be switched on only by a parent. Teens would get a prompt every three days offering a non-personalized feed.
• AI chatbots: Chatbot operators could not give minors features that simulate companionship, encourage self-harm or illegal activity, generate sexually explicit content, suggest the bot is a real person, put engagement ahead of safety or discourage a child from seeking help from trusted adults.
• Child exploitation: Platforms could not recommend teen accounts to adults the teen is not connected with, or let those adults message teens. Reports of child sexual exploitation would get human review within 48 hours, under a one-strike rule for adult offenders.

Violations would be treated as unfair practices under Florida law, with penalties of up to $50,000 per violation, Uthmeier said. That is the same per-violation ceiling written into the existing under-14 law.

Builds on a law that just survived appeal

The current law, known as HB 3, was signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis in 2024. It bans social media accounts for Florida children under 14 and requires parental consent for 14- and 15-year-olds. It applies only to platforms that use algorithms along with features the Legislature deemed addictive, such as infinite scrolling, push notifications and autoplay.

Two tech industry groups, the Computer & Communications Industry Association and NetChoice, sued in October 2024, arguing the law violates the First Amendment rights of platforms and users. Chief U.S. District Judge Mark Walker in Tallahassee blocked it in June 2025, finding it likely unconstitutional. The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals stayed that injunction in November 2025, allowing the state to begin enforcing it.

On Oct. 14, a three-judge 11th Circuit panel ruled 3-0 that the law likely regulates speech "in a content-neutral manner" and overturned the injunction, CBS News Miami reported. The panel said the law likely "doesn't burden substantially more speech than necessary" because it applies only to platforms shown to induce heavy use by children. NetChoice lawyer Paul Taske said the group was disappointed and "evaluating all of our options." The case now returns to federal court in Tallahassee.

Because the appeals court leaned on the law's focus on platform features rather than content, the Safe Screens Act's approach, which again targets features such as scrolling, autoplay and like counts, appears designed to fit within that reasoning. Whether courts would accept curfews, hard daily time caps and app store mandates is a separate question that has not been tested in Florida.

A run of lawsuits against tech companies

The proposal also arrives as Uthmeier's office presses several cases against the companies that would be most affected:

The Snap suit accuses the company of giving accounts to users it knows are under 14 and failing to get parental consent for 14- and 15-year-olds, according to CBS News Miami. The Discord complaint, filed Oct. 15, accuses the messaging platform of marketing itself as safe for children while failing to verify ages and letting strangers send friend requests and direct messages to children under default settings, News4JAX reported. None of those allegations has been proven in court.

In the Meta case, Florida declined to join a nationwide settlement that most other states reached with the company this year, with Uthmeier saying it did not go far enough. His Oct. 7 motion asked a Pasco County judge to order Meta to verify ages, remove users under 14, create a quiet mode and cap monthly use, WLRN reported. The legal news service MLex reported Oct. 19 that the judge denied the request for a temporary injunction; the underlying case continues. Meta has argued that restricting one platform simply pushes teens to others.

The new proposal effectively asks lawmakers to write into statute, for every covered platform, many of the same limits the state has been seeking against Meta in court.

Why chatbots are in the bill

The chatbot provisions reflect a newer front for the attorney general. In June, Florida became the first state to sue OpenAI and its chief executive, Sam Altman, over ChatGPT's alleged risks to minors, arguing among other things that the free version had no age verification and did not require children's accounts to be linked to a parent's. OpenAI has said it takes protections for minors seriously and pointed to an age-estimation system it introduced this year.

Central Florida has also been at the center of a widely watched civil case brought by an Orlando-area mother against an AI companion company over her teenage son's death, a case News 6 referenced alongside its coverage of the proposal. The Safe Screens Act's ban on features that simulate companionship or pretend to be human is aimed squarely at that kind of product.

The politics

Uthmeier, a Republican and former chief of staff to DeSantis, was appointed attorney general in 2025 after Ashley Moody moved to the U.S. Senate. He is on the Nov. 3 ballot seeking a full term against Democrat José Javier Rodríguez, a former Miami-Dade state senator. Child online safety has been one of the most visible themes of Uthmeier's tenure, and the proposal lands less than two weeks before Election Day.

Restrictions on children's social media use have drawn broad bipartisan support in Tallahassee. HB 3 was a priority of then-House Speaker Paul Renner and passed both chambers with large majorities. The tech industry and civil liberties groups have consistently argued that age verification mandates force platforms to check the ages of all users, adults included, and raise privacy and free speech concerns. No technology company had publicly responded to the Safe Screens Act in the coverage reviewed by The Florida Press.

What's next

For the proposal to become law, a member of the House or Senate would need to file it as a bill for the 2027 regular session, which begins in March, and it would have to clear committees in both chambers. Uthmeier's office did not identify a sponsor in the coverage of Thursday's announcement.

Meanwhile, the state's existing under-14 ban remains enforceable after the Oct. 14 ruling, and the challenge to it returns to Judge Walker's courtroom. The lawsuits against Meta, Snap, Discord and OpenAI continue in state courts. Any version of the Safe Screens Act that passes would almost certainly face its own legal challenge from the industry groups that fought HB 3.