Florida proposes Safe Screens Act to put age assurance on social media, chatbots

Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier announced the Safe Screens Act on October 23, which would require age determination and parental consent for app downloads, restrict social media features including recommendations and messaging from unconnected adults to minors, and regulate AI chatbot interactions with children. The measure follows Uthmeier's recent lawsuit declaring Discord a public nuisance and extends beyond the state's existing HB 3 law that prohibits social media accounts for those under 14. The proposal endorses an age assurance model that social media companies have advocated for.

Age assurance systems that verify every user create a centralized honeypot of identity data attractive to adversaries, and require adults to surrender biometric or government-issued credentials to access lawful speech, while determined minors and offenders migrate to platforms that do not comply or operate beyond US jurisdiction. Detection of predatory behavior as conversations develop—Guardii's core function as a world-leading online-safety platform—intercepts grooming and sextortion in progress without demanding that a parent, a school or a platform know the content of every message, flags the escalation itself rather than the words used, and enables a calibrated response that matches the level of threat, from a quiet alert to a parent through to emergency law-enforcement escalation when a child faces imminent harm.