Every parent I know is fighting the same losing battle against a phone. And the public debate offers them two useless options: a vague "ban the app" panic that never survives a court challenge, or a shrug — "that's the parents' problem, not the state's." Neither one touches the actual machine.
Let me offer a third option, and it comes from the law I practice every day.
The machine, described honestly
The apps our kids spend hours on are not neutral tools that children happen to overuse. They are engineered — by some of the most sophisticated behavioral engineering on earth — to maximize the time a user spends and the attention a user gives, because time and attention are what the company sells to advertisers. Infinite scroll, autoplay, streaks, variable-reward notifications, algorithmic feeds tuned to whatever keeps this particular kid looking: these are not accidents. They are the product. And the product works better on a twelve-year-old brain than on an adult one, which is precisely why the twelve-year-old is the target.
A company that designs a product to capture a child's attention against the child's own interest — sleep, school, friendships, mental health — is doing something the law has a name for in every other context: it is exploiting a relationship of trust and vulnerability for its own gain.
The fix: a duty of loyalty
Here's the legal idea. When we entrust someone with something precious and they hold power over it, the law imposes a fiduciary duty — a duty of loyalty. A trustee must manage the trust for the beneficiary, not for himself. A guardian must act in the ward's interest. A lawyer can't sell out a client. The duty exists precisely because the powerful party could otherwise exploit the vulnerable one, and the law refuses to let it.
A child's attention and development qualify as something precious, and a platform that holds algorithmic power over it holds the kind of power the law has always constrained. So: platforms serving Minnesota minors owe those minors a duty of loyalty. That means the product must be designed and operated in the child's interest, not to maximize engagement at the child's expense. No engagement-maximizing design aimed at a known minor. No feeding a kid content the algorithm knows is harmful because it keeps them watching. No dark patterns to defeat a parent's limits. And the duty is enforceable by the Attorney General — which is where I come in — with real penalties, so it's a rule and not a suggestion.
This is a better legal footing than a ban, and it's the reason I'd take it to court with confidence. A ban tells a company what it can't offer, and runs headlong into the First Amendment. A duty of loyalty tells a company how it must treat a child it has chosen to serve — the same way we regulate every other fiduciary — and it leaves speech alone while going straight at the exploitative design.
The honest concession
To the civil-liberties side: any rule about what platforms show kids will get a hard First Amendment look, and it should; the duty has to be aimed at design and conduct, not content, to survive. To the industry: "the child's interest" needs a workable definition or it's unenforceable, so the statute should name the specific practices — engagement-maximizing design, harmful-content amplification, dark patterns against parental controls — rather than leave it to vibes. And to parents: no law replaces you. This is about making the company stop working against you.
What I'd actually do
Enact a duty of loyalty for platforms serving Minnesota minors, defined by specific prohibited design practices.
Give the Attorney General enforcement authority with penalties that matter to a company that size.
Require age-appropriate defaults — the safest settings on by default for known minors, with parental controls the product can't undermine.
If you build a product to hook a twelve-year-old, you owe that twelve-year-old a duty. Minnesota should say so — and enforce it.
First the facts. Then the fix.
Sources
This is a policy position. The fiduciary/duty-of-loyalty concept as applied to digital platforms draws on Jack Balkin's "information fiduciaries" scholarship (e.g., 49 U.C. Davis L. Rev. 1183 (2016)) and on the design-code approach of the U.K. Age Appropriate Design Code and California's Age-Appropriate Design Code Act (2022), the latter of which has faced First Amendment litigation that informs the design-not-content framing here. Documentation of engagement-maximizing design practices and their effects on minors is drawn from the U.S. Surgeon General's 2023 advisory on social media and youth mental health. Cross-reference to this series' articles on data brokers and Minnesota's consumer data privacy law (Minn. Stat. §§ 325M.10–.21).
The statutory definition of prohibited design practices and the penalty structure would be set in legislation; the litigation status of comparable design-code laws should be confirmed before relying on it. Corrections: campaign@madgettformn.com.