Massachusetts bills aim to protect kids from addictive feeds and enact bell-to-bell policy
July 16, 2026 — While most states have ended their 2026 legislative sessions, Massachusetts lawmakers are just getting started.
In the past two weeks members of the Senate and House have introduced and moved proposals to protect children and teens from addictive social media feeds, and to enact a statewide bell-to-bell policy that keeps smartphones out of kids’ hands while they’re learning.
What’s in S 3164: Stopping addictive algorithms
The Senate’s addictive algorithms bill, S 3164, emerged from the Senate Ways and Means Committee on July 2. The bill was quickly approved by the Senate 38-2 on July 9, and is now with the House. WBUR has a full report on the bill as of July 10 here.
Here’s what’s in the bill:
The bill specifies that a social media operator must “use commercially reasonable and technically feasible methods to determine” if a user is a minor (under age 18).
Social media operators must set default safety settings for all minors. Those safety settings must:
disable an addictive social media feed;
disable push notifications between 12 a.m. and 6 a.m.;
disable autoplay or other auto-advance functions that continuously present content to a user;
disable infinite scroll functions.
The operator must also post a clear and conspicuous reminder after the user has accessed the social media platform for more than one cumulative hour of use in any 24-hour period, and every 30 minutes of cumulative use, that the user has accessed the platform for that amount of time. The user must be required to acknowledge the reminder before continuing use of the platform.
Minor users must not be allowed to change the default settings unless the operator has used reasonable means to determine the user is not a minor.
There are also requirements for minor users regarding the public accessibility of their accounts. Operators must, for minors,
restrict the visibility of the content on a covered minor’s account to only connected accounts;
disable the visibility or sharing of the minor’s geolocation data with other users;
limit the minor’s sharing of content to only connected accounts;
limited the minor’s direct messaging to only connected accounts.
The state attorney general will be responsible for identifying commercially reasonable and technically feasible methods for social media operators to determine if a user is a minor.
Violation of the requirements will be considered an unfair or deceptive act or practice under current Massachusetts law. The attorney general will have exclusive authority to bring a civil action against an operator for violations. (No private right of action.)
What’s in S 2581: enacting a statewide bell-to-bell policy
S 2581 would direct the state Department of Education to create a policy regarding the prohibition of electronic devices on school grounds during school hours.
The movement to create phone-free schools has gained tremendous momentum recently, with a number of states enacting laws to create policies that keep smartphones out of the hands of kids during class time.
When experts cite the benefits of phone-free schools, they often speak of bell-to-bell policies that keep students off their phones and personal devices for the entire school day.
One of the best resources to understand bell-to-bell policies is this recently published Phone-Free Schools State Report Card, created by our allies at the Institute for Families & Technology, The Anxious Generation, and other nonprofit groups.
S 2581 would require the policy to be updated annually. Individual public schools and districts must adopt some version of the bell-to-bell policy and communicate it to students and parents, and post it on the school’s website, no later than Sept. 1 of each year.
This bill, introduced by Sen. Julian Cyr with many co-sponsors, was originally approved by the Senate in 2025. It moved to the House as H 5366 in early 2026, was approved and then changed back to S 2581 in May 2026. It currently sits in conference committee as S 2581 as of July 16, 2026.
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