Amendment ID: S2561-13

Amendment 13

Social Media in Schools

Mr. Cyr, Ms. Creem, Mr. Collins and Ms. Rausch move that the proposed new draft be amended by adding the following sections:-

"SECTION X. Chapter 71 of the General Laws is hereby amended by adding the following section:-

Section 103. (a) “Social media”, a public or semipublic internet-based service or application that meets both of the following criteria: (1) a substantial function of the service or application is to connect users in order to allow users to interact socially with each other within the service or application; provided, however, that a service or application that provides email or direct messaging services shall not be considered to meet this criterion on the basis of that function alone; and (2) the service or application allows users to do all of the following: (i) construct a public or semipublic profile for purposes of signing into and using the service or application; (ii) populate a list of other users with whom an individual shares a social connection within the system; and (iii) create or post content viewable by other users, including, but not limited to, on message boards, in chat rooms, or through a landing page or main feed that presents the user with content generated by other users; provided, that “public or semipublic internet-based service or application” excludes web-based virtual learning platforms that are solely used for academic or professional purposes; and provided further, that “content” does not include media put on a service or application exclusively for the purpose of cloud storage, transmitting files, or file collaboration.

(b) Schools, school districts and supervisory unions shall be prohibited from: (1) utilizing social media for communication with students directly unless the program or platform is approved for such communication by the school district; provided, however, that any approved communication program or platform shall allow school officials to archive all communications and prevent all communications from being edited or deleted once a communication has been sent; and (2) requiring students to use social media for out-of-school academic work, school sports, extracurricular clubs or any other out-of-school school-sponsored activities.

(c) Schools shall have in place measures to prevent students from accessing social media while on school-issued electronic devices and while under the supervision of the school."

"SECTION X. Each public school or district shall adopt a policy regarding the use of social media as required by section 102 of chapter 71 of the General Laws before the start of the 2026 – 2027 school year.

And by, in section 4, inserting after the words “chapter 71”, the following wording:- “and the social media policies in schools pursuant to section 103 of chapter 71”.