This week the North Carolina General Assembly Senate Judiciary Committee voted to advance House Bill 301, Social Media and AI Safety, a measure that combines two very different policy areas into a single package. One section focuses on preparing students and educators for a world increasingly shaped by artificial intelligence. The other creates a sweeping regulatory framework governing minors’ access to social media.
The two measures in HB301 raise fundamentally different questions about the role of government, education, technology, and parental authority.
The AI education provision makes sense as we enter an era likely to be dominated by an artificial intelligence economy. It is important that students learn how to use it effectively and ethically. Whether our students become engineers, nurses, accountants, entrepreneurs, teachers, or skilled tradesmen, they will encounter AI tools. Understanding how these systems function, where they are useful, and where they can fail is critical digital literacy.
However, the social media provisions deserve much closer scrutiny.
AI LITERACY
H301 directs the State Board of Education to incorporate AI literacy into K-12 computer science standards. It requires the Department of Public Instruction to develop model AI policies for public schools, establish evaluation criteria for AI-powered educational tools, and work with the Friday Institute to provide educator training.
All good work and laudable goals, but like any other educational directive, the risk is unecessary centralization that creates a bureaucratic monster of compliance hoops. Teachers, administrators, and parents consistently navigate regulations and oversight, which can undercut the agile and innovative culture that AI makes possible.
Anyone close to government and education knows the labyrinth of procurement requirements, frameworks, and state review processes that are an albatross on any good idea. Rather than letting an AI training requirement become a de facto permission structure, local school districts, charter schools, educators, and parents need flexibility to keep up with changing technology without a centralized approval process. The state should only give resources and best practices and let the experts run and adapt.
SOCIAL MEDIA
The social media section of HB 301 raises a different set of concerns.
Strengthening parental decision rights and protecting our kids are legitimate policy goals. Concerns about addiction, mental health, harmful content, and the influence of online platforms dominate discussion everywhere from congressional committees to parenting and education blogs. In Carolina Journal’s September 2025 poll, shortly after the assassination of Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk, more than a quarter of North Carolina voters believed that media and social media were to blame for increases in political violence.
But good intentions do not always mean good policy.
HB 301’s extensive regulatory framework includes age verification requirements, parental consent mandates, account restrictions, enforcement mechanisms, civil penalties, punitive damages, and expanded litigation exposure for social media companies.
First, the bill’s age-verification rules require age checks but also says methods used must protect personal information and that the identifying data platforms collect cannot be repurposed, retained, or shared after age verification. It does not prescribe the methods to collect data or how/whether compliance would be audited.
On Tuesday, Meta (parent company of Facebook and Instagram) announced its own plan to address these issues, saying they are testing a system to place users under the age of 14 in a special content environment where they are less subject to algorithms that push content based on behavior. It builds on their rollout in October of 2025 of Instagram Teen Accounts in the US, UK, Australia, and Canada, defaulting teens in to a new 13+ content setting.
This announcement indicates that Meta is already using AI technology to identify users under the age of 14 and drive behavior-based algorithms, meaning you get more of the content you are already watching. HB301 would formalize that process before a user gets access to the account, potentially leading to broader data collection, even if it is anonymous.
If you believe in federalism, states should be laboratories for policy rooted in individual liberty. In this case though, social media reach doesn’t stop at the state lines and Generation Alpha knows better than any of us how to bypass the regulations. I’ve watched my own young teen log into a streaming platform through a UK VPN, so she can watch old Disney channel shows that aren’t licensed here. She does it without hesitation or how-to tutorials. It’s just the world we are living in. Our government rules don’t stop it; parents do.
I’m not saying government should stand by and do nothing, but we should certainly be wary of creating broad new authorities for state government without clear evidence that the benefits outweigh the costs. If we do need such regulations, a 50-state policy patchwork isn’t the answer. Congress is ultimately better positioned to address this than individual states are.
Preparing our kids for an AI economy is important, but how we structure it and empower local educators and programs is equally critical. The social media provisions in HB301 raise far more complicated questions about privacy, government authority, and regulatory design. These are different debates. Our legislators should treat them that way.
