The Alaska Senate Labor and Commerce Committee heard testimony Wednesday on legislation that would prohibit social media platforms from allowing Alaskans under 16 to hold accounts and ban algorithmic content feeds for users under 18.

Senate Bill 262 would require platforms like TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube, and Facebook to terminate accounts held by minors under 16 and permanently delete their personal data. For 16- and 17-year-olds, the bill would prohibit platforms from using algorithmic recommendation systems that create the endless scroll.

Alaska joins a growing national and international movement to restrict teen social media access. The Alaska House passed similar legislation in February 2025 on a 33-6 vote, though a Senate committee later stripped broad social media restrictions from that bill while retaining an AI child sexual abuse ban. Australia and Turkey have passed comparable restrictions, and the European Union has maintained limitations on teen social media use for several years.

Laura Asche, staff to committee chair Senator Jesse Bjorkman, told the committee the legislation stems from constituent complaints about social media drama spilling into schools and creating significant negative interactions among students.

"This situation really stemmed from a number of constituents separately for different reasons that came to our office and situations that created quite a bit of strife in our schools that bubbled over from social media into very significant negative interactions that happened in school," Asche said.

Asche walked the committee through how social media platforms have evolved from tools for connecting with friends and family into monetized platforms designed to maximize user engagement through anger-inducing content and endless scrolling.

"Senate Bill 262 would require that social media platforms prohibit teens under the age of 16 from having a social media account, and they would say that teens who are 16 and 17 could have an account, but they could not have an account that gives them that endless scroll," Asche said.

The bill applies to platforms where at least 10 percent of users are under 18, spend more than two hours per day on the site, and the site has one or more addictive features.

Theresa Roble, director of policy and advocacy at the Alaska Children's Trust, testified in support of the legislation, citing data from the Alaska Youth Risk Behavior Survey. Two out of five Alaska high school students report feeling persistently sad or hopeless, a nearly 60 percent increase since 2009. In 2023, 72 percent of high schoolers reported using social media several times daily, and 22 percent reported experiencing online bullying.

"Social media platforms are engineered with addictive features that are designed to maximize the time users spend on them," Roble said. She listed infinite scroll, autoplay videos, push notifications, live streaming, and interactive metrics like shares and likes as deliberate strategies to create compulsive use.