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.