The Project 2029 social media ban proposal has become the first major policy blueprint from a Democratic group preparing for the 2028 presidential race. Released this week under the name “Kids Over Clicks,” the plan would bar children under 16 from holding social media accounts, enforce a nationwide bell-to-bell ban on cellphones in schools, and set new liability rules for AI chatbots.
The proposal lands at a moment when lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have spent years failing to pass meaningful federal legislation on kids’ online safety. Project 2029 wants to change that by handing the next Democratic president a ready-made agenda they can act on from day one.
What Is Project 2029?
Project 2029 is a Democratic policy initiative built as a mirror image of the conservative Project 2025. Where Project 2025 laid out a governing playbook for a future Republican administration, Project 2029 is doing the same for Democrats ahead of the 2028 election.
The group’s executive director, Chad Maisel, previously advised President Biden and Sen. Cory Booker. Rather than opening with a divisive economic or immigration proposal, Project 2029 deliberately chose kids’ online safety as its first rollout. The reasoning is simple: it’s one of the few major issues that hasn’t already been claimed entirely by one party.
Future policy agendas from the group are expected to cover healthcare, housing, artificial intelligence, and immigration in the months ahead.
Inside the Project 2029 Social Media Ban Proposal
The core of the plan is straightforward. The Project 2029 social media ban would prohibit anyone under the age of 16 from holding an account on major platforms. The group frames the cutoff not as a permanent block, but as a delay — giving adolescent brains more time to mature before they’re exposed to feeds engineered to maximize engagement.
The proposal draws on research showing that nearly one in three American children shows signs of social media addiction by the end of middle school. Project 2029 argues that families and state health systems have been left to absorb the fallout of that addiction largely on their own, while the federal government has stayed on the sidelines.
To make the case, the plan compares social platforms to other products aimed at children that already face safety testing before they reach the market — cribs, car seats, and bike helmets among them. If a physical product for kids has to clear a safety bar, the argument goes, so should the digital ones.
Default Privacy and Safer Platform Design
Under the proposal, platforms would be required to set the strongest privacy settings by default for any new account. It also calls for eliminating design features known to keep young users scrolling longer than intended, including infinite scroll and autoplay.
Section 230 Reform
The plan calls for narrowing Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, the law that currently shields platforms from most lawsuits tied to how their products affect users. Project 2029 wants that shield reduced specifically in cases involving harm to children, a change that would open the door to more legal claims against tech companies.
New Rules for AI Chatbots
As AI chatbots become a bigger part of teenagers’ daily lives, the proposal also takes aim at the technology directly. It would bar chatbots from presenting themselves as licensed professionals — a response to growing reports of kids turning to AI systems for mental health support or advice the systems aren’t equipped to give safely.
The Push for Phone-Free Schools
Alongside the account restrictions, Project 2029 is proposing a nationwide, bell-to-bell cellphone ban in schools, with limited exceptions. Under this model, phones would stay out of reach from the first bell of the day to the last, not just during class periods.
The group is pairing that policy with a broader cultural push: a campaign encouraging parents to hold off on giving their kids a smartphone until age 14, well before any account restriction would even apply. The idea is to shrink the window in which kids have unsupervised access to social platforms in the first place, rather than relying on the age restriction alone.
Who’s Backing the Plan
The proposal already has support from a notable lineup of Democratic figures. Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey, considered a possible 2028 presidential contender, has publicly backed the framework. New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill and American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten are also named supporters.
Weingarten has said kids’ online safety will factor directly into which 2028 candidates her union decides to support, calling it a useful measure of where a candidate actually stands.
Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, author of The Anxious Generation, is one of the plan’s highest-profile outside backers. Haidt describes this as a “tobacco moment” for the social media industry — a point where the underlying science, mounting lawsuits, and public opinion have all converged to make inaction harder to justify.
Where the Project 2029 Social Media Ban Faces Criticism
Not everyone is convinced this is the right opening move. Critics point out that age-based bans are relatively easy for tech-savvy teens to bypass using VPNs or falsified birthdates — a limitation Project 2029 itself acknowledges. The group has been upfront that the ban is “not a silver bullet,” but rather one piece of a larger strategy.
There’s also a political wrinkle. Polling shows the idea of banning under-16 social media use draws stronger support among Republicans than Democrats, which has led some commentators to question why a Democratic group chose this as its debut issue rather than something more central to the party’s current base.
Others have raised a more structural concern: even as the plan pushes to restrict kids’ access, it stops short of removing platforms’ broader legal shield entirely, leading some critics to argue the proposal doesn’t go far enough in holding tech companies accountable.
How the U.S. Plan Compares Globally
The Project 2029 social media ban proposal doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Several countries have already moved on similar restrictions. Australia enacted a ban on social media accounts for under-16s that took effect at the end of last year, and the government is now working to strengthen that law after data showed a large share of restricted teens were still finding ways onto the platforall forms. Regulators there have also imposed fines on platforms that fail to take reasonable steps to remove underage accounts.
That international experience is likely to shape how any future U.S. version of the policy is written, particularly around enforcement mechanisms and how to prevent workarounds.
What Happens Next
For now, Project 2029’s plan remains a policy proposal, not law. Its influence will depend on how much traction it gains among 2028 Democratic contenders and whether it shapes the party’s eventual platform. Some elements, like the smartphone-free childhood campaign, don’t require legislation at all and could move forward through public pressure alone.
Meanwhile, Congress is dealing with its own kids’ safety push, including a bipartisan package that incorporates a version of the Kids Online Safety Act. Whether that moves faster than the 2028 political calendar remains an open question.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the Project 2029 social media ban?
It’s a proposal from a Democratic policy group that would prohibit children under 16 from holding social media accounts, as part of a broader “Kids Over Clicks” agenda ahead of the 2028 election.
Does the plan also affect schools?
Yes. It calls for a nationwide, bell-to-bell ban on cellphones in schools, separate from the account restriction itself.
Is this already law?
No. It’s a policy blueprint intended to guide a future Democratic president and party platform — it has not been introduced as federal legislation.
Who supports the proposal?
Backers include Sen. Cory Booker, Gov. Mikie Sherrill, AFT president Randi Weingarten, and social psychologist Jonathan Haidt.
