Florida Social Media Law

Social media is not new; Instagram and YouTube have been with us for well over a decade. What is new is the algorithmic design that has driven the platforms’ growth and, with it, effects measurable at a population level. The average American teenager now spends nearly five hours a day on social media, a quarter of 13- and 14-year-olds spend seven hours or more, and roughly half of teens say the platforms have a mostly negative effect on their peers. Those numbers are not dispositive by themselves; the issue is why — and the answer, in the view of the Florida Legislature, lies in the features engineered to keep users engaged. Florida’s response, House Bill 3 of 2024, is among the most restrictive social media laws in the country, and after a year of litigation it is in force and being enforced.

Our Miami intellectual property attorneys advise app developers, brands, agencies, and creators on Florida’s social media statutes and on the publicity, privacy, and advertising laws that govern what happens on those platforms — including the right of publicity under § 540.08, which follows every name, face, and voice that appears in a feed, a sponsored post, or an AI-generated clip.

What HB 3 Requires: §§ 501.1736–501.1738

A statutory definition of “social media platform,” age tiers for accounts, deletion on demand, and age verification for harmful content

Florida enacted HB 3 (Chapter 2024-42, Laws of Florida) in March 2024, effective January 1, 2025, as a direct response to the reach of social media companies into the lives of minors. Section 501.1736 defines a social media platform by four cumulative features: it allows users to upload content or view the content or activity of other users; ten percent or more of its daily active users under 16 spend an average of two hours or more per day on it; it employs algorithms that analyze user data to select content for users; and it has addictive features — infinite scrolling, push notifications or alerts, personal interactive metrics, auto-play video, or live-streaming. Nearly every platform commonly called social media derives its success from some combination of those features. The statute does not restrict the features; it restricts who may hold an account on a platform that has them.

How HB 3 Is Being Enforced — and Challenged

An injunction, a stay, a pending appeal, and the Attorney General’s first cases

The statute’s first year was fought in court. The Computer & Communications Industry Association and NetChoice sued in the Northern District of Florida in October 2024, arguing that the account restrictions violate the First Amendment and are preempted by federal law. Judge Walker dismissed the initial complaint for lack of standing in March 2025, then, on June 3, 2025, preliminarily enjoined the account provisions for users under 14 and the parental-consent provisions for 14- and 15-year-olds. On November 25, 2025, a divided Eleventh Circuit panel stayed that injunction pending appeal, allowing enforcement to proceed; the Attorney General announced that the office would “aggressively enforce” the law. The appeal was argued in March 2026 and remains pending, and the district court has extended discovery into 2027. HB 3’s age-verification provisions stand on firmer footing after Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton, 606 U.S. ___ (June 27, 2025), in which the Supreme Court upheld Texas’s age-verification requirement for adult websites under intermediate scrutiny.

Enforcement began before the stay. In April 2025 the Attorney General sued Snap, Inc. in Santa Rosa County circuit court, alleging that Snapchat operates as a social media platform under the statute while knowingly permitting accounts by minors under 14 and marketing itself to teens — a “12+” rating in the Apple App Store and a “T” rating in the Google and Microsoft stores — and that its addictive features (Snapstreaks, Spotlight, Snapscores, the Friend Solar System) and its My AI chatbot expose those users to harm. The complaint sought civil penalties, fees, and punitive damages. Snap removed the case to the Northern District of Florida on May 21, 2025; the court denied remand and denied the State’s motion for a temporary injunction in August 2025, finding the State had not shown a substantial likelihood of success, and the State’s interlocutory appeal (No. 25-12814) is pending. In 2025 the Attorney General also sued adult-content site operators under § 501.1737 for displaying sexually explicit material with no age verification, and on June 15, 2026, sued TikTok and ByteDance under § 501.1736, FDUTPA, and public nuisance over understated app-store age ratings and algorithmic delivery of mature content to minors.

Algorithms, AI & the Statutory Definition

No mention of “AI” — but algorithmic personalization is one of the four defining criteria

HB 3 never uses the words “artificial intelligence,” but AI sits inside its definition: a platform qualifies only if it employs algorithms that analyze user data to select content for users. That criterion captures the recommendation engine at the core of every modern feed — the “For You” page, the generative-AI ranking and personalization models that have replaced simpler collaborative filtering, and the chatbots increasingly embedded in messaging products. The Snap complaint made the point expressly by targeting My AI, a conversational agent available to users under 14 without, the State alleges, adequate vetting or safety measures. A platform that relies on generative-AI-assisted ranking, personalization, or companion features should treat that functionality as satisfying the algorithm criterion and focus its compliance analysis on the remaining three. Other states have gone further and regulated the design itself: New York’s SAFE for Kids Act (June 2024) restricts algorithmic feeds and overnight notifications for users under 18 absent parental consent; California’s Protecting Our Kids from Social Media Addiction Act bars addictive feeds and scheduled notifications to known minors; and in 2026 Idaho, Oregon, and Washington enacted the first laws regulating AI chatbots’ interactions with minors, while Alabama and Utah moved age verification to the app store. Florida’s own 2026 AI Bill of Rights (SB 482), which would have added parental controls over minors’ chatbot conversations, passed the Senate but died in the House.

The Right of Publicity on Social Platforms: What § 540.08 Means for Minors, Creators, Brands & Platforms

Consent for a minor belongs to the parent — and HB 3 changes who can give it

Every account on a social media platform is built around a name, a face, and increasingly a voice, and each of those is protected by Florida’s right of publicity. Section 540.08 prohibits publishing or otherwise publicly using a person’s name, portrait, photograph, or other likeness for trade, commercial, or advertising purposes without express written or oral consent; for a minor, consent may be given only by a parent or guardian (§ 540.08(6)). The remedy is an injunction, damages including a reasonable royalty, and punitive damages. Platforms have historically relied on their terms of service — the license every user grants when creating an account — as the consent that lets them use user content, including a user’s likeness, in “sponsored” or “social” advertising formats. HB 3 and § 540.08 together unsettle that reliance for Florida minors.

• Accounts that should not exist cannot supply consent. A Florida minor under 14 may not hold an account at all, and a 14- or 15-year-old may hold one only with parental consent. A click-through license accepted by a user the statute says cannot be an account holder, or by a 15-year-old whose parent never consented, is a weak basis for the parental consent § 540.08(6) requires. Any commercial use of such a minor’s likeness — a sponsored story, a “friends who like this” ad unit, promotional material featuring user content — carries publicity exposure on top of the HB 3 violation.
• Deletion and the license. When a minor’s account is terminated under § 501.1736(2)–(3), the platform must permanently delete the account’s personal information — which includes the images and videos the platform may have licensed. A platform that continues to use a deleted minor’s likeness in advertising, training data, or promotional archives faces both a statutory violation and a § 540.08 claim for which no consent can be shown.
• Creators, family vlogs, and “kidfluencers.” A parent’s consent satisfies § 540.08 for a child’s appearance in monetized content, and Florida — unlike Illinois, Minnesota, and California — has no statute requiring that a share of the child’s earnings be set aside in trust. But a parent’s consent does not bind the child’s other parent in a custody dispute, does not extend to a brand’s separate use of the child’s image beyond the post, and can be revoked for future uses. Brands sponsoring family content should obtain a release from the parent that names the brand, the media, the term, and any AI or derivative uses.
• Brands reposting user content. A customer’s photo of herself with a product, reposted to a brand’s commercial feed or used in a paid ad, is a use of her likeness for advertising. A hashtag is not consent; the platform’s license to the platform is not a license to the brand; and where the user is a minor, only a parent can consent. Obtain a written release, or use the platform’s own permission tools and keep the record.
• Platform and creator names in advertising. A platform that promotes itself with a creator’s name or face, or a brand that implies a creator’s endorsement, needs the creator’s consent under § 540.08 and, if the implication is false, faces Lanham Act false-endorsement and FDUTPA exposure as well; the FTC’s Endorsement Guides require disclosure of any material connection in the post itself.
• AI-generated likenesses of minors. Synthetic images and voice clones of real minors are the fastest-growing category of platform abuse. A sexual deepfake is criminal under § 836.13 and subject to Brooke’s Law’s 48-hour takedown; a commercial use of a synthetic likeness is a § 540.08 claim (with only a parent able to consent); and a platform’s own tools that generate or recommend such content sit inside the algorithm criterion of HB 3. The pending federal NO FAKES Act would add a digital-replica right and a notice-and-takedown system on top.

The elements, remedies, and Florida litigation record of the right of publicity are treated in full in our Right of Publicity Matters summary; the privacy torts that accompany unauthorized access to a minor’s account in our Right of Privacy Matters summary; and the e-mail and text rules that govern platform and brand marketing to Florida users in our FEMCA and FTSA summaries.

Recommendations for Platforms, Brands & Creators

Determine whether the statute applies, build the age tiers, and treat every likeness as licensed — or not

• Determine whether the service is a “social media platform.” Measure the under-16 usage criterion from the platform’s own data, document the algorithmic and feature criteria honestly, and revisit the analysis whenever a feature — including an AI recommendation or chatbot — is added.
• Build age-tiered account controls. Block account creation for users under 14; route 14- and 15-year-olds into a verifiable parental consent flow before activation; and use the platform’s own signals to identify accounts likely held by users under 14, since the statute requires termination of those as well.
• Choose a reasonable, documented age-verification method. For harmful-content services, select anonymous or standard verification under § 501.1737, contract with the verification vendor for the § 501.1738 non-retention and security duties, and keep the records that show the method was applied.
• Provide termination and deletion mechanisms that meet the statutory clocks. Five business days for a minor’s request and ten for a parent’s, with back-end deletion of personal information — including images, videos, and any copies in advertising or training pipelines.
• Align the terms of service and consent flows with § 540.08. Draft the parental consent to cover the specific commercial uses the platform intends to make of a minor’s content, exclude minors’ likenesses from advertising formats where consent is uncertain, and honor revocation.
• For brands and creators: get the release, disclose the relationship, and watch for synthetic content. Written releases from parents for any minor who appears in sponsored content, FTC-compliant disclosures, and monitoring for AI-generated likenesses of the people the brand works with.

Full Capability

Our Social Media Law Services Include: