- Gov. Spencer Cox signed three tech safety bills in Utah aimed at returning power to parents and protecting children online.
- The new laws require age verification for app downloads, give users control over their data and prohibit students from using personal devices during classroom hours.
- Supporters argue these measures will safeguard children from privacy intrusions and improve student mental health and educational focus.
In the Utah Capitol’s Gold Room on Friday morning, Gov. Spencer Cox ceremoniously signed three bills regarding tech safety. He was joined by the bills’ sponsors and individuals and groups who helped push the legislation forward.
Before inviting the bill sponsors to speak about their legislation, Cox talked more generally about what these new laws aim to achieve. He described their larger purpose as returning power back to parents and ensuring safety for children online.
“I truly believe it’s our free will that’s being taken away from us,” Cox said. “And we know it’s going to get worse with the advent of AI. These social graphs will know more about us than we know about ourselves.”
Cox continued, “It’s tearing us apart, the fabric of our country, it’s making us hate each other.”
The online safety bills Cox ceremoniously signed include:
SB142: App Store Accountability Act — requires app developers to verify a user’s age category and confirm that the user’s parent gave yearly parental consent to the app store. It also allows parents of harmed minors to sue developers or the app store if they violate these provisions.
HB418: Data Sharing Amendments — gives users the right to own, control and manage their data, ensuring that they can permanently delete their own information.
SB178: Devices in Public Schools — this bill prohibits students from using their cellphones, smartwatches and other nonschool provided technology during classroom hours.
Project Liberty founder attends event
The sponsor of the data sharing amendments bill, Rep. Doug Fiefia, R-Herriman, stated his legislation is “a turning point” for Utahns.
“It’s where we shift power back to where it should have always remained,” Fiefia said.
Invited to stand behind the governor with Fiefia and other bill helpers was Frank McCourt, the founder of Project Liberty. His nonprofit aided Fiefia in pushing the legislation and has grown since its establishment in 2021 to shift power from large tech companies to users.
The project consists of “technologists, academics, policymakers and citizens committed to building a better internet — where the data is ours to manage, the platforms are ours to govern, and the power is ours to reclaim," per Project Liberty’s site.
Before signing, Cox thanked Fiefia for his bill, adding that it is “the first of its kind in the country.″
Sen. Weiler: ‘Now we have app developers accessing our kids in the middle of the night in their bedrooms’
Sen. Todd Weiler, R-Woods Cross, spoke next on his App Store Accountability Act.
He began by describing the battle to get his legislation through the House and Senate. “Everyone in this room knows, and every first year law school student knows, that kids can’t enter contracts,” Weiler said.
But the way app stores have worked for decades goes against this. Weiler explained, “Every time someone downloads an app or an app changes, and it pops up and says do you accept these terms and conditions, we’re allowing our 11-year-olds, our 13-year-olds and our 15-year-olds to enter into binding contracts.”
Many of these contracts, Weiler said, are asking for permission to collect the child’s data, sometimes to access their microphone and camera.
Weiler compared privacy levels to when he was a child, and stated, “Now we have app developers accessing our kids in the middle of the night in their bedrooms ... and this bill says, ‘this is not OK.‘”
Cellphones in classroom ban, long in the work, signed
Sen. Lincoln Fillmore, R-South Jordan, and Rep. Douglas Welton, R-Payson, spoke lastly on their bill banning cellphone from classrooms.
Fillmore began by saying, Welton, who works as a school teacher in Payson, was initially opposed to the bill when it was first proposed in 2023. “Just watching how it effects kids in classrooms changed his mind.”
The most dangerous thing cellphones do in classrooms is distract kids from their education, Fillmore said.
Welton also took a moment to speak. “We spend millions of dollars on mental health, counselors, a lot of things like that, and it costs a lot of money, and it seems like one of the basic thing we could do to cut down on that expense and increase mental health for our students is to eliminate cellphones in schools,” he said.
While signing, Cox said he hopes the next step taken with this bill is to increase it from just a ban during class time to a ban from the start to the end of the school day.