In a significant move to shield children from the gripping clutches of addictive social media, New York State has taken a bold step forward. On Tuesday, it was unveiled that the SAFE for Kids Act has reached its final form and is set to be implemented at the start of next year.
The legislation aims to disrupt the cycle in which social media giants inundate young users with personalized content through complex algorithms and late-night notifications. However, parents looking for an all-inclusive remedy should temper their expectations.
Court blocks have stymied similar efforts across the United States, while countries like Australia and the United Kingdom have witnessed the agility of youth who swiftly maneuver around such digital barriers, often outpacing legislative measures.
Although the SAFE for Kids Act might spare some pre-teens from a 2 a.m. Instagram alert, a gentle reminder is warranted: lawmakers cannot act as digital gatekeepers for every child. The onus remains on families, educators, and communities to assume the role of safeguarding children online.
This week, Governor Kathy Hochul and Attorney General Letitia James announced the completion of the SAFE for Kids Act, an initiative aptly abbreviated as “Stop Addictive Feeds Exploitation.” They confirmed that the law will be activated on January 25, 2027.
The new law would prevent qualifying social media companies from presenting minors with an algorithmically personalized feed and would also bar them from delivering them notifications between midnight and 6 a.m.
New York kids can only overrule the default setting if a parent consents, according to the law, which will be enforceable by civil penalties and age-verification processes, like government ID verification, facial age estimation, and checks against official records.
Critics have warned that age verification means that everyone is less free online, and that requiring users to prove their identities can jeopardize adults’ right to go online and speak anonymously without government oversight.
New York’s law, to its credit, has attempted to placate concerns by giving platforms the option to choose “zero-knowledge” age verification systems, which are cryptographic and don’t share information with third parties except for a user’s adult/minor status.
Even still, the law is vulnerable, and any parent who thinks it’s a permanent fix should think again. Other states, like California and Arkansas, have tried to implement similar notification curfews, only to be blocked by courts, who deemed the regulations unconstitutional.
Other laws attempting to ban minors from social media across the world have shown that wherever legislators have stood between kids and their apps, the kids find a way to circumvent them.
When Australia banned minors from social media in late 2025, many kids simply made new accounts, asked for help with bypassing restrictions, downloaded VPNs to change their geolocation data, and even used an older person’s ID or put on makeup to trick age verification barriers — according to the government’s own report.
A YouGov survey of Australian parents also found that 27% reported their kids were switching over to alternative, less regulated platforms, meaning the law may have sent them to sketchier parts of the internet’s Wild West — and those are just the parents who know what their kids are really doing online.
When Britain enforced age checks for pornography and dangerous online material that same year, VPN downloads from Proton rose 1,200%. The UK government’s own investigation found that 40% of 11 to 17-year-olds had circumvented age checks, as of this month.
Of course, social media restrictions on kids do keep some of them offline. But here in New York there will surely be kids downloading VPNs, using parents’ accounts to get on platforms, and flocking to unregulated websites to access the content they’re after.
That’s not because New York lawmakers don’t have kids’ interests at heart, but because Albany will never be able to stand in for family and community in the battle to keep kids safe from online harm.
Parents, families, schools, and community members need to step up.
To give them their due, they have been trying: Schools around the country have been implementing bell-to-bell cell phone bans. More and more parents are keeping their kids off social media until they’re old enough to scroll responsibly. Flip phones and dumb phones are having a moment. Even kids themselves are expressing a desire to unplug.
But corrosive online material such as gambling, pornography, religious radicalization or school shooter manifestos spread insidiously online and the government can never be a stand-in for grassroots interventions — and parents shouldn’t count on them to be their saviors.