Right-wing authoritarianism and support for restricting adolescents' access to social media: Evidence from Brazil's Felca Law

Support for restricting civil rights remains a central concern in psychological science. Among these rights, access to information has increasingly been regulated, including through policies limiting adolescents' use of social media. Yet little is known about how adolescents themselves evaluate such measures or how ideological dispositions structure their support. Drawing on research linking Right-Wing Authoritarianism (RWA) to endorsement of restrictive policies, the present study examined whether RWA and age predict support for a new Brazilian law that prohibits unsupervised social media use for individuals under 16 (the so-called Felca Law). A sample of 308 Brazilian adolescents (ages 11–19; 48.4% female) completed measures of RWA and support for the Felca Law. Higher RWA and older age independently predicted greater support for the law, with no significant interaction between them. These findings indicate that authoritarian ideological dispositions operate during adolescence and extend to contemporary digital regulation. Support for the Felca Law appears to be shaped less by developmental maturation than by stable ideological mechanisms, even in a policy domain framed around youth protection.