Last week, two federal appeals courts gave Florida and Georgia the go-ahead to enforce laws that will age-gate social media platforms and block young people from accessing them. The decisions mark a significant shift in how courts are treating laws that restrict minors’ online speech, and not in a good way.

The laws require social media platforms to verify users’ ages and either block minors entirely or require parental consent. Florida and Georgia pitched these as child safety measures. The courts bought it.

But here’s the thing: these laws don’t actually make kids safer online. They just make it harder for them to access information, connect with communities, and exercise their First Amendment rights. Courts have long recognized that minors have constitutional rights to speak and access information, even if those rights aren’t as broad as adults’. These laws treat social media access as a privilege that states can revoke, not a platform for protected speech.

The EFF, which has been fighting these laws, points out the obvious: age verification systems are privacy nightmares. To prove you’re old enough to use social media, you’ll need to hand over government ID, biometric data, or other sensitive information. Not just kids, everyone. There’s no way to verify a 14-year-old isn’t on the platform without checking everyone’s age. That data will get collected, stored, and inevitably breached or misused.

And the verification systems themselves aren’t reliable. They’ll block some kids and miss others. They’ll create a false sense of security while pushing minors toward less regulated, more dangerous corners of the internet.

Who This Actually Affects

Teenagers in Florida and Georgia who use social media to organize, learn, find community, or just talk to their friends. LGBTQ+ kids who rely on online spaces when their physical communities aren’t safe. Young people dealing with mental health issues who connect with support networks online. Students doing research. Activists organizing around issues they care about.

The laws also hit adults. If you live in Florida or Georgia and want to use social media, you’ll now need to prove your age. That means more surveillance, more data collection, more risk.

Platforms will likely respond by implementing strict age verification across the board rather than trying to geofence these requirements to specific states. So even if you don’t live in Florida or Georgia, you might still get caught up in this.

The Legal Landscape

These decisions are circuit splits waiting to happen. Other courts, including the Fifth Circuit in Texas and the Eighth Circuit in Arkansas, have blocked similar laws on First Amendment grounds. The reasoning was straightforward: laws that restrict access to protected speech based on age have to survive strict scrutiny, and these laws don’t. They’re not narrowly tailored, there are less restrictive alternatives, and they burden far more speech than necessary.

Florida and Georgia apparently drew more favorable panels. The opinions haven’t been published yet, so we don’t know exactly how the courts justified upholding these laws. But the fact that they reached different conclusions than other circuits suggests this is heading to the Supreme Court eventually.

What Happens Next

Florida and Georgia can start enforcing these laws immediately. Platforms will need to implement age verification or face penalties. Some will comply. Others might challenge the laws further or simply block users in those states.

Young people in both states will lose access to platforms they currently use. Some will find workarounds. VPNs, fake IDs, lying about their location. The tech-savvy kids will be fine. The ones who need these platforms most, who don’t have the resources or knowledge to evade the restrictions, will be cut off.

The EFF is asking people affected by these laws to email them at agegates@eff.org. If you’re in Florida or Georgia and you or your kids lose access to social media because of age verification requirements, document it. That information will be useful for future legal challenges.

The Bigger Picture

This isn’t really about protecting kids. If lawmakers wanted to make young people safer online, they’d fund digital literacy programs, require platforms to give users real control over their data and experiences, or hold companies accountable for harmful design choices.

Instead, they’re passing laws that feel like doing something while actually just restricting speech and expanding surveillance. It’s security theater, except the stage is the internet and the cost is constitutional rights.

Age verification mandates have been a policy zombie for years. Courts strike them down, legislators pass new versions, repeat. These decisions give that zombie new life. Unless higher courts step in or these laws fail spectacularly in practice, expect more states to follow Florida and Georgia’s lead.

The vulnerability here isn’t kids on social media. It’s a legal system that’s willing to treat internet access as a privilege instead of a forum for protected speech, and a political climate that prioritizes the appearance of action over actual solutions.