photo by: W.Va. Legislative Photography

Sgt. Jillian Yeager with the West Virginia State Police Crimes Against Children’s Unit testified Tuesday to the growing number of cyber tips involving children being exploited online.

CHARLESTON — Members of the West Virginia Legislature are reviewing bills aimed at protecting children from exploitation on the internet, including restricting access to social media platforms.

The state Senate Education Committee and the House Technology and Infrastructure Committee recommended bills for passage Tuesday focused on child access to social media, websites with obscene content, and educating children on protecting themselves from sexual exploitation through social media.

The House Tech Committee recommended House Bill 5226 Tuesday afternoon, the Child Social Media Protection Bill, sending the bill to the House Judiciary Committee.

The bill would prohibit children from using social media accounts unless the social media platform has the express permission of the child’s parent and/or guardian beginning July 1, 2025. Social media companies would be required to set up age verification methods for their sites and apps.

The bill would prohibit any direct messaging to a minor through a social media platform unless already linked through subscribing to each other’s accounts; not show the minor’s account through search results; and not show advertising to the minor or targeting though suggested groups or users. Social media companies would be required to provide minor account passwords to parents on demand.

HB 5226 would also place time limits on the use of platforms and apps by minors between 10:30 p.m. and 6:30 a.m. The bill would give enforcement powers to the Attorney General’s Office. It would create a cause of action for parents/guardians to sue social media providers.

Del. Wayne Clark, R-Jefferson, is the lead sponsor of HB 5226. He said the bill was related to a bill he sponsored in 2022. House Bill 4074, also known as “Meghan’s Law,” is named for Meghan Clark, the 15-year-old daughter of Delegate Clark.

That bill requires educators to undergo training to identify the signs of eating disorders and self-harm every three years along with similar training and education for middle and high school students.

Clark said his research on Meghan’s Law led him to further research on the dangers of social media on the development of children and the kinds of information children have access to.

“We know that our kids are so reliant on these social media accounts to learn and function, it’s hard to have conversations with them,” Clark said. “As close as we are to our cell phones, our kids grew up with them. It’s all they do. My hope is to give some help back to the parents to keep kids from doing that’s that could essentially harm them.”

The bill is similar to laws in Louisiana, Arkansas, and Utah, which was the first state to implement such a bill in 2023. Arkansas’ law is being challenged in federal court, while Utah’s law has not been implemented yet. House Speaker Pro Tempore Paul Espinosa, R-Jefferson, said lawmakers should wait and see how the federal cases shape up.

Others questioned why the bill seems aimed at some social media platforms — like Facebook and TikTok — and not platforms such as YouTube which also deliver content and ads based on algorithms and users’ recommendations.

“It sounds like we’re exempting a lot of places on the internet that are very prone to addictive behavior and bullying, because they are social media platforms,” said House Minority Leader Pro Tempore Kayla Young, D-Kanawha.

The bill has a similar goal to another House bill. According to the Associated Press, the House Judiciary Committee recommended House Bill 4867 for passage Monday. The bill would require companies that offer products or services that could be seen as harmful to children – such as pornography – to require age verification on their websites.

The Senate Education Committee recommended a committee substitute Senate Bill 466 for passage Tuesday morning, sending the bill to the Senate Finance Committee. The bill requires the development of a Safety While Accessing Technology (SWAT) education program in elementary and secondary schools.

SB 466 requires schools to provide instruction on the risks associated with sharing sexually suggestive or sexually explicit materials, the legal and criminal consequences, and other long-term and unforeseen consequences for sharing the materials.

The SWAT program is meant to show students the potential connection between sharing sexually suggestive or sexually explicit materials and the sharing of those materials by others, bullying, cyber bullying, extortion, and human trafficking.

The bill requires the state Board of Education to approve age-appropriate education for grades three through 12 and each county to adopt policies for annual instruction in the SWAT program. The bill also allows parents/guardians to be able to opt their children out of the program.

West Virginia State Police Sgt. Jillian Yeager is one of 12 members of the State Police’s Crimes Against Children Unit. Yeager said the number of reported cyber tips to law enforcement agencies and other agencies in West Virginia has spiked since 2020, from 1,300 tips in 2020 to 3,100 cyber tips in 2023.

“You can see the steady increase in the number of cyber tips that we’re receiving, and we don’t have the manpower to deal with all of those,” Yeager said.

Yeager explained that predators will often pose as teenagers in order to prey on children to make them comfortable with sharing explicit images of themselves in order to either blackmail them into either providing money or later entering into human trafficking.

“The perpetrator will initiate a relationship with the child online, possibly pose as a teenager themselves, build a relationship with that child and get that child to send them a nude photograph,” Yeager said. “They then blackmail the child saying, ‘I will send this image that you already sent me to every person in your friends group and your parents, unless you a) send me money, b) send me more sexually explicit material. This has led to children under the age of 13 years old committing suicide.

“Imagine an adolescent child who doesn’t have the forethought of problem-solving at that point to deal with that? So, that’s a serious issue that we’re dealing with today,” Yeager continued.

Also Tuesday, the House Tech Committee recommended a strike-and-insert amendment to House Bill 5338 – relating to the Consumer Data Protection Act – for passage before sending the bill to the House Finance Committee for review.

The Consumer Data Protection Act would set limits on businesses or other entities that collect or sell personal information and establish regulations for accessing digital data, correcting data, deleting data and moving data. The bill would establish the right to opt out of personal data collection.

The bill would apply to persons and corporations doing business in the state that either control the data for at least 100,000 consumers or derive more than 50% of their revenue for the sale or processing of personal data of at least 25,000 consumers. The bill gives the Attorney General’s Office authority to enforce the act and creates a fund to assist the office in enforcement.