Technology and Platform Regulation

Almost nothing here is settled by federal statute, and almost everything is being settled by states and courts. Thirty-six percent of American teenagers say they use at least one major platform almost constantly, and 64 percent now use AI chatbots, about three in ten of them daily. Sixteen percent use a chatbot for casual conversation and 12 percent for emotional support, which is a product category that did not exist when any of the governing law was written. Meanwhile the harm that platforms carry rather than cause has grown steeply: Americans reported losing 2.1 billion dollars in 2025 to scams that began on social media, eight times the 2020 figure, against a social advertising market of 117.7 billion dollars. Twenty-one states have enacted laws on minors' access to social media and fourteen more passed chatbot safety laws in 2026 alone, but the resulting map is split three ways between rules in force, rules enjoined, and rules awaiting a court. The Supreme Court let Mississippi's age-verification law stand in an emergency ruling while one justice wrote that it is likely unconstitutional. At the federal level there is no general artificial intelligence statute, only narrow ones such as the TAKE IT DOWN Act of 2025 on AI-generated intimate images; instead an executive order created a litigation task force in January 2026 to challenge state AI laws in court, after the Senate had stripped a proposed ten-year moratorium on such laws by 99 votes to 1.

• Very likely better · 93 %

  Effect medium (+3.2)
  A Minimum Age Online

  Bar under-13s from social media accounts and switch off algorithmic feeds for everyone under 17.

  Minors online Kids Off Social Media Act
• Unclear · 44 %

  Effect small (−0.27)
  Liability for Scam Adverts

  Require platforms to take reasonable steps against fraudulent adverts, and remove their immunity for the ones they are paid to run.

  Online advertising S. 3774 and H.R. 7548, the SCAM Act
• Likely worse · 25 %

  Effect small (−0.11)
  One Federal AI Rulebook

  Replace the state statutes on the catastrophic risks of the most capable AI models with one federal regime, as the FRONTIER Act proposes.

  Artificial intelligence FRONTIER Act (H.R. 9925), introduced in the House in July 2026
• Likely worse · 18 %

  Effect medium (−0.67)
  Companion Chatbots and Minors

  Require AI companion services to verify age, keep minors out of open-ended relationship chats, and refer a user in crisis to a person.

  Artificial intelligence Senate-backed AI child safety bill, April 2026