North Carolina's Senate Education Committee advanced House Bill 301, which would prohibit social media accounts for children under 14 and require parental consent for users aged 14 and 15, after the bill passed the House 106-6. The committee added an amendment introducing AI instruction standards into the state's computer science curriculum beginning in the 2028-29 school year. Similar age-restriction laws in other states have faced First Amendment challenges in federal courts, and concerns were raised about the privacy implications of platform age-verification mechanisms.
Age-gate laws require platforms to verify every user's identity and exclude entire cohorts from access, but do not address the contact-based harms that occur within permitted age groups or on unregulated messaging channels. Guardii's real-time monitoring of direct messages detects grooming, sextortion and child sexual abuse material at the point of contact across multiple platforms, enabling a school or parent to identify a child in danger regardless of the account age declared, and surfaces the specific threat without requiring blanket exclusion or universal identity submission.
