Appeals Court Lets Georgia Enforce Social Media Age Verification Law

A federal appeals court has cleared the way for Georgia to enforce its law requiring social media platforms to verify users' ages and obtain parental consent before children under 16 can open accounts. On October 15, a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit vacated a preliminary injunction that had blocked Senate Bill 351 since before its planned July 1, 2025, effective date. Passed in 2024, SB 351 requires social media services to make commercially reasonable efforts to verify a user's age, with anyone who cannot be verified treated as a minor, and parents of children younger than 16 must consent before their children join a service. Companies that fail to make reasonable verification efforts can be fined.

Age verification mandates impose a privacy burden on every user, including adults who must prove their age to access lawful services, and compliant minors may be displaced to unmonitored channels where verification is not enforced. Detection that identifies grooming, sextortion, age-inappropriate contact and coercion in direct messages addresses the harm itself without requiring blanket age gates or collecting sensitive identity data from all users. Rather than restricting access, this approach blocks or flags hostile contact before it reaches the target, surfaces a child in crisis to a parent or school, and enables rapid escalation to the right authority in an emergency, detecting threat patterns in real time across platforms including Instagram, Snapchat, Discord and Roblox. The Eleventh Circuit's decision allows enforcement to proceed, but the operating question is whether restricting access or detecting harm at the point of contact better protects children while preserving lawful use.