New Jersey's new Kids Code Act will block social media notifications for minors during school hours and overnight starting in September, and parents who catch platforms violating the law can sue for $5,000.
Governor Mikie Sherrill signed the bill at a ceremony where she compared the tech industry's grip on children to the tobacco companies of a previous generation, and then went further. Platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok will face mandatory notification blackouts, algorithmic restrictions, and new data protections for every minor user in the state.
The law lands as states across the country grapple with how to protect children online, but New Jersey's version carries a specific enforcement tool that sets it apart: a private right of action that lets any parent drag a noncompliant company into court.
Under the Kids Code Act, social media platforms must disable all notifications for minor accounts during two windows. On school days between Labor Day and Memorial Day, notifications shut off from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Every night of the year, they go dark from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m.
The blackout covers the platforms where American teenagers spend the bulk of their screen time. Governor Sherrill named TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube by name at the signing ceremony, The Sun reported.
Beyond notifications, the law bars platforms from serving minors algorithmic content feeds, the auto-generated streams designed to keep users scrolling. A minor's feed must default to a non-algorithmic display unless the user specifically asks to see more or fewer posts from a given account. That distinction matters: it shifts the default away from the engagement-maximizing design that critics say hooks young users.
Children's personal data also gets new protections. The law prohibits tech companies from using social media algorithms to target kids with what the statute treats as addictive content.
At the bill signing, Sherrill did not mince words about the industry her state is now regulating. She framed the fight as bigger than the decades-long campaign against cigarette makers.
"Big tech isn't just the big tobacco of our era. They are worse."
She followed that with a pointed accusation about platform design:
"They designed platforms that hijacked our kids' attention spans."
Sherrill cited a statistic to back the urgency: the typical American teenager spends roughly 35 hours a week on platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube, close to a full-time job. The governor offered the figure without naming a specific study, but the number tracks with widely cited screen-time research.
Assemblywoman Andrea Katz, the bill's chief sponsor, built the case from the parental side. She cited two figures that frame the scope of the problem her legislation targets.
"Half of parents say their children's mental health has suffered over the past year because of social media."
Katz added a second data point aimed squarely at the late-night notification cycle the law is designed to break:
"Nearly half of teenagers say they lose sleep every single night because they feel stuck on these platforms."
Neither Sherrill nor Katz identified the surveys behind their numbers. But the claims echo findings that have circulated through congressional hearings and state legislative debates for the past several years, and that have drawn bipartisan concern about children's mental health.
Enforcement is where the Kids Code Act grows teeth. The law empowers two parties to bring civil action against companies that fail to comply: individual parents and the New Jersey attorney general.
Each successful lawsuit can result in a $5,000 court payout. That figure may sound modest against the balance sheets of companies like Meta or ByteDance, but it creates a multiplier effect. Every parent in the state with a minor on a noncompliant platform becomes a potential plaintiff. Aggregate exposure could climb fast if platforms drag their feet on implementation.
The law does not appear to include criminal penalties or regulatory fines beyond the civil suit mechanism. That leaves open questions about how aggressively the attorney general's office will pursue cases, and whether $5,000 per action is enough to change corporate behavior at companies that measure revenue in billions.
For all its specificity on notification windows and algorithmic defaults, the Kids Code Act leaves significant gaps. The most obvious: how will platforms verify which users are minors? Age verification has been the stumbling block for nearly every state-level online safety law. Without a reliable mechanism, the restrictions exist on paper but may prove difficult to enforce in practice.
The law also does not clarify whether it draws age-based distinctions, treating a 10-year-old differently from a 16-year-old, for example, or applies uniformly to everyone under 18. And while Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok are clearly in the crosshairs, the full list of covered platforms remains unclear. YouTube was cited by the governor in her remarks but was not explicitly named as a regulated platform in the reporting on the statute's text.
None of these gaps are unique to New Jersey. They are the same practical obstacles that have slowed or stalled children's online safety efforts in other states and at the federal level. The difference is that New Jersey is moving forward anyway, betting that the legal framework will force platforms to solve the compliance problems themselves.
Give parents a cause of action and a dollar amount, and the platforms will figure out age verification soon enough, or their lawyers will.
