Stop the Scroll Act Mandates Mental Health Warning Labels and Hourly Interruptions on Social Media

The “Stop the Scroll Act” is a major move to regulate social media platforms, requiring them to display a prominent mental health warning label to all users in the United States every time they open the app or website. This isn’t a small notice tucked away in the settings: users must actively acknowledge the potential risks before they can start scrolling, and the warning must pop up again every hour of continuous use. The warning label must include access to federal crisis resources, specifically mentioning the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. This law applies not only to traditional social media but also to “anonymous content sharing platforms”—think of any app that lets you share content without an account—and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), working with the Surgeon General, has 180 days to finalize the exact look and function of these new mandatory warnings.

The New Gatekeeper: A Mandatory Acknowledgement

Imagine opening Instagram or TikTok, and instead of seeing your feed, you hit a required pop-up warning about the potential mental health risks of use. That’s the core change here. The bill (Sec. 4) mandates that this label must be “conspicuous” and cannot be hidden in a hyperlink or terms and conditions. For the average user, this means an unavoidable friction point when accessing a platform. If you’re a busy parent quickly checking a school group on Facebook or a contractor looking up a quick tutorial on YouTube, you now have a mandatory extra step. The only way to dismiss the initial warning is to actively acknowledge the risk and choose to proceed. If you stay on the platform, the label reappears every 60 minutes of continuous use. This hourly interruption is a major operational change that forces platforms to break the flow of continuous engagement, which is exactly what their business models rely on.

Who’s Policing the Scroll?

Enforcement for this new rule is split between two powerful entities: the FTC and State Attorneys General (Sec. 5). The FTC is tasked with treating any violation of this Act like an unfair or deceptive business practice under the existing FTC Act, meaning platforms face the full weight of federal regulatory scrutiny and significant civil penalties. On top of that, State Attorneys General can also sue platform providers in federal court if they believe their state residents are being harmed. If a platform is found to have violated the law “knowingly or repeatedly,” the civil penalty is calculated based on the greater of the number of days of non-compliance or the number of end users affected, multiplied by the maximum civil penalty under the FTC Act. For a platform with millions of users, that potential fine could be astronomical, creating serious financial risk for non-compliance.

The Cost of Compliance and the Definition Gray Area

While the public health goal—increasing awareness and providing crisis resources—is clear, the implementation raises practical questions, especially for the “covered platform providers.” They face immediate, high compliance costs to redesign their user interfaces and implement the required hourly interruptions. Furthermore, the definition of an “anonymous content sharing platform” is broad, potentially sweeping in many niche apps and sites that might not have the resources of a major social media company. The bill’s vagueness around what exactly constitutes “continuous use” (Sec. 4) will be a critical point for the FTC to clarify in its regulations. If you’re checking a platform for 5 minutes, closing it, and then reopening it 10 minutes later, does that reset the clock? These details matter a lot to both users and the companies footing the bill for the changes.