SALT LAKE CITY — Governor Spencer Cox has signed a bill delaying Utah's controversial social media law from going into effect.
The governor on Friday night signed Senate Bill 89, which delays implementation of the social media law from March until October. The Utah State Legislature suspended rules and rapidly pushed the bill through on Friday in separate votes in the House and Senate.
"While pushing back the effective date gives us more time to incorporate more feedback into the law, we are as committed as ever to protecting our children from the harms of social media," Gov. Cox said in a statement.
FOX 13 News reported earlier this week that Senate leaders indicated the controversial law would get a rewrite after multiple lawsuits from social media users and a trade group representing apps and platforms. It comes after lawmakers passed it last year, creating a series of rules that require age-verification (which some platforms have claimed would involve every social media user in Utah uploading a government ID to verify they are of age), crackdowns on targeted advertising and algorithms that keep people engaged.
Utah's political leaders have aggressively gone after social media sites and apps that they accuse of crafting addictive algorithms that harm the mental health of youth while also targeting them for data used for advertisements. The state has filed its own lawsuits against TikTok and Meta (the owner of Instagram and Facebook).
