Florida recently passed its Florida Technology Transparency law, which became effective on July 1, 2023. One section of the law is intended to protect children from the harms of social media. But the law is much broader than that. First, the law does not only apply to children under the age of 13, like the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act. Instead, the law applies to all minors under the age of 18. Second, the law applies to "online platforms" that provide "an online service, product, game, or feature likely to be predominantly accessed by children."  An "online platform" means a "social media platform, online game, or online gaming platform."  

For online platforms, the law prohibits the following:

a) Processing of personal information of any child if the online platform has actual knowledge or willfully disregards that the processing may result in substantial harm or privacy risk to children

b;) Profiling a child unless both of the following criteria are met: (i) the online platform can demonstrate it has appropriate safeguards in place to protect children; and (ii) profiling is necessary to provide the online service and profiling does not pose a substantial harm or privacy risk to children

c) Collecting, selling, sharing, or retaining any personal information that is not necessary to provide an online service with which a child is actively or knowingly engaged unless the online platform can demonstrate a compelling reason that collecting, selling, sharing, or retaining the personal information does not pose a substantial harm or privacy risk to children

d) Using personal information of a child for any reason other than the reason for which the personal information was collected

e) Colling, selling, or sharing any precise geolocation data of child unless it is strictly necessary for the online platform to provide the service

f) Collecting any precise geolocation data of a child without providing an obvious sign to the child for the duration of the collection

g) Using dark patterns to encourage a child to provide personal information

h) Using any personal information collected to estimate age or age range for any other purpose or retain that personal information longer than necessary

While this law only applies to social media sites, online games and online gaming platforms that are predominantly accessed by children, the definition of children includes all minors. Therefore, many social media sites that are considered "general audience" sites under COPPA may fall under this law. Moreover, if an online platform does fall under the law, there are no opt-in exceptions. The site must comply with the prohibitions for all users whether they are adults or minors, and whether the site has received consent from the user or the parent of the user. Therefore, online platforms should immediately consider whether they do fall under the law and if they do, what changes they must need to make to comply with it.