AN ACT Relating to protecting Washington children online;
Summary
HB 1834 creates a new chapter in Title 19 RCW aimed at protecting Washington children online by regulating certain “addictive internet-based services or applications,” including social media platforms and other services that use recommendation feeds. The bill defines an addictive feed as a feed that prioritizes or recommends user-generated media based on information associated with the user or the user’s device, subject to several exceptions such as direct communications, search results, cloud storage, and content expressly requested by the user. It also defines “minor” as a Washington resident under 18 and sets out operator obligations tied to whether the operator knows or reasonably determines that a user is a minor.
Impact
The bill would impose new duties on operators of covered online services, including restrictions on providing addictive feeds to minors without parental consent, limits on sending push notifications to minors during certain hours, and requirements to offer user controls such as time limits, hiding like counts, default non-personalized feeds, and private account settings. It also restricts the use and retention of personal information collected to determine a user’s age, and it bars operators from using age-verification data for other purposes. The bill declares these practices to be matters of public interest under the Consumer Protection Act, making violations unfair or deceptive acts in trade or commerce and unfair methods of competition, and it creates a new chapter in Title 19 RCW. The act is also contingent on specific funding in the omnibus appropriations act, or it becomes null and void.
Sentiment
The committee votes show generally favorable but not unanimous support for the bill’s direction. The House Consumer Protection & Business Committee advanced the first substitute 9-5, the House Appropriations Committee advanced the second substitute 18-8, and later advanced a third substitute 17-9. That pattern suggests the bill had meaningful support, especially around child online safety, but also recurring concern about its scope and implementation.
Contention
The main points of contention likely center on how broadly the bill defines an “addictive” service and whether the state should regulate recommendation algorithms, push notifications, and default feed settings for minors. Another likely area of dispute is the age-determination requirement, because the bill allows operators to use personal information to determine age but limits how that information may be retained or reused, raising privacy and compliance questions. The parental-consent framework and the requirement to provide controls such as private mode and non-personalized feeds may also have been debated as burdens on platform design and business operations versus necessary child-protection measures.