Illinois enacts Children's Social Media Safety Act requiring age verification

Illinois Governor JB Pritzker signed HB5511, the Children's Social Media Safety Act, into law on July 31, 2026, requiring age verification for children under 18 to use social media and restricting platform notifications between 10:00pm and 7:00am. The law also requires covered social media platforms to prevent adults from displaying content to, interacting with posts by, or direct messaging a minor under 18 unless specifically allowed to do so.

Age verification confirms who is using a platform but does not address what happens once they are on it, and notification restrictions alter the timing of contact, not its nature. The threat is not the hour at which a message arrives but the coercion, grooming or sexual exploitation it contains. Real-time pattern detection intercepts harm as the conversation develops, identifying escalation and sustained targeting in direct messages regardless of when they are sent, blocking the hostile contact before it reaches the child and surfacing the child at risk to the authority who can intervene. Guardii's detection modules operate continuously across Instagram, Snapchat, Discord and Roblox, addressing the underlying harm rather than the clock.