The Childhood Index evaluates all 50 states across nine criteria, placing them into four tiers based on how strongly their leadership, laws, and policies protect children online and support a real-world, play-based childhood.
Our in-house policy team conducted an analysis of each state’s laws, policies, and leadership, and drew on the Phone-Free Schools Report Card, original survey data from the Institute for Family Studies, and expert evaluations from Let Grow, the Institute for Families and Technology, the Becca Schmill Foundation, and Smartphone Free Childhood. Together, these sources provide a multi-dimensional picture of each state’s policy landscape and the strength of its leadership on these issues.
We applied a careful and consistent methodology, while recognizing that no review of state policy is perfect. Because laws and leadership actions are complex and policy moves quickly, we may not have captured every nuance. If there’s something you believe we missed, or criteria we should consider in future iterations, we welcome feedback.
We placed each state into one of four tiers: National Leaders, Rising Stars, Emerging Action, and Limited Action. These tiers are meant to function as a benchmark, not a verdict, and our goal is for every state to reach National Leader status. For guidance on how to get there, explore our Policy Menu. A state’s placement is based on how it performed across the following criteria. We assessed each criterion on a red/yellow/green scale:
Little or no action.
Partial or promising action.
Strong, meaningful action.
We assessed each state across nine criteria, organized into four categories. Each of the nine factors listed below carried roughly equal weight in our review.
Distraction-Free Schools: The strength and scope of each state’s smartphone-free school policies, as graded by the Phone-Free Schools Report Card. We translated letter grades into our red/yellow/green scale: A or B = green, C or D = yellow, and F or no grade = red.
Childhood Independence: Whether the state has passed a Reasonable Childhood Independence law clarifying that activities like outdoor free play and walking to school alone are not neglect, as determined by Let Grow.
Governor Leadership: To what extent has the state’s governor publicly advocated for policies that support kids’ online safety and demonstrated a credible commitment to policy change?
Attorney General Leadership: Has the state’s attorney general taken meaningful action to hold tech companies accountable? We looked at independent litigation, participation in multistate lawsuits against Meta and TikTok, and signatures on key NAAG letters focused on kids’ online safety.
We evaluated state policies in these categories against our established policy principles and model legislation.
Social Media Age Limits: Whether the state has enacted laws barring children under 16 from creating social media accounts, and how closely those laws align with model legislation and Australia’s best practices.
Regulating Harmful Design: Whether the state has enacted enforceable laws regulating harmful technology design features, including addictive features like infinite scroll and autoplay, algorithmic recommendations, manipulative AI chatbot designs, and default privacy protections for minors.
Holding Tech Companies Accountable: Whether the state has enacted laws that make it easier for families to seek legal recourse against tech companies, including duty-of-care standards or presumptions of harm from engagement-driven algorithms.
Incentivizing Safer Tech for Minors: Whether the state has enacted laws that incentivize safer product design, such as data portability requirements or taxes on harmful externalities.
Resilient Childhood Score: Each state’s Resilient Childhood Score as determined by the Institute for Family Studies, based on survey data from nearly 24,000 parents across 50 states. This score measures the degree to which children have independent, playful, socially diverse, and technology-light childhoods. We translated IFS’s 1–10 scores into our red/yellow/green scale: 8–10 green, 4–7 yellow, 1–3 red.
States are placed into one of four tiers, from most to least action taken:
States in this tier have demonstrated sustained political courage to act on multiple fronts simultaneously, addressing at least three of our core criteria with bold, enforceable legislation. Their leaders understand there is no single solution to reclaiming childhood and have made a credible, multi-pronged commitment to change.
States in this tier are making meaningful progress across at least two core criteria, with serious legislative attempts spanning multiple areas of our framework, such as phone-free schools, childhood independence protections, and social media or tech accountability laws. Political leadership in these states is generally strong.
States in this tier have taken meaningful action in at least one area, whether through gubernatorial leadership, a strong phone-free school policy, a childhood independence law, or an early effort at tech regulation. These states have demonstrated the political will to act and are past the starting line.
States in this tier have taken little or no meaningful action across our core criteria. Some have made partial attempts, such as joining multistate litigation or passing limited phone-free school policies, but these efforts fall short of the standard set by higher tiers.
We created the Childhood Index to accelerate progress in the movement to reclaim childhood and protect kids online.
The next step belongs to you.