Illinois new online safety law needs a second look to protect LGBTQ+ youth from unintended
harms
By: Christopher Balthazar, PhD, Executive Director, TaskForce Prevention & Community Services
For over 35 years, TaskForce has served LGBTQ+ youth of Color in Chicago’s West Side. The
young people who walk into our building come to find resources and on-site referrals, HIV/STI
screening and education, and a safe space for fellowship and community. Oftentimes, members of
our staff are the first affirming adults they have interacted with, especially since many arrive from
households that refuse to accept who they are.
But for those who are unable to access community hubs like ours, finding those resources and
support is increasingly difficult, which is why online spaces have become so important. That is why
Illinois cannot afford to get its new online safety law wrong.
For LGBTQ+ youth, the internet and social media platforms represent far more than entertainment.
Under this presidential administration and amid a surge of hateful rhetoric targeting them, many
have moved to find community and explore their identity online. Whether it’s through online resource
hubs, platforms, or forums, the internet has become critical for those without anywhere else to turn.
For some, it’s even proven to be the difference between life and death.
This past session, lawmakers advanced HB5511, the Children’s Online Social Media Safety Act, a
bill championed by Governor Pritzker. The bill stems from the fact that we need to create new
safeguards for our kids, and it was carefully crafted to ensure that platforms won’t be required to
remove content related to sex, sexuality, gender, or reproductive health. That’s a meaningful choice,
and it reflects a broader conversation that lawmakers are having in response to concerns from the
LGBTQ+ community about similar bills.
But for all the safeguards built into the bill, it still has one critical shortcoming: it treats verifiable
parental consent as universally attainable. In many family settings, that assumption might be
reasonable. For LGBTQ+ youth of Color who live in homes where their identity is not accepted, it is
not.
Since the bill requires verifiable parental consent before a covered platform can offer users under 18
an 'addictive feed,' the very algorithms that help young people first find affirming creators and
potentially lifesaving resources online, many risk being shut out. Compounding the need to obtain
permission from a parent or legal guardian, many of the youth we serve do not live with either. Some
live in shelters or are between homes, and others are on our waitlist for housing. For them, obtaining
parental consent is out of reach, meaning the resources they would otherwise be able to access are,
too.
With such critical access at risk for the communities we serve, we urge lawmakers to revisit this bill
and invite youth-serving organizations and the young people who stand to be most impacted to the
table before it takes effect in January 2028.
It’s crucial that we get this right. The young people who walk through our door, and those who cannot
reach a community hub like ours, deserve to feel safe online, but they also deserve to be able to
access it in the first place. Illinois can and should do both and avoid creating the legal roadblocks
that make that impossible.
