Signed on February 5, 2026, South Carolina’s Social Media Regulation Act introduces the nation’s most aggressive independent audit requirement for online platforms accessible by minors. Here is what makes it different — and what companies offering covered services must do before July 1, 2026.
The wave of state-level children’s digital privacy laws keeps building. California started it in 2022 with their age-appropriate design code. Maryland, Nebraska, and Vermont followed with their own variations. Now South Carolina has entered the arena — and in at least one critical dimension, it has gone further than any state before it.
On February 5, 2026, Governor Henry McMaster signed H3431, the South Carolina Social Media Regulation Act, into law as Act No. 96. The law creates Chapter 80 of Title 39 of the South Carolina Code, the Age-Appropriate Code Design (AADC) chapter, and it is already in effect…