CNN
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California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Friday signed a bill aimed at curbing children’s social media use, the state’s latest effort to regulate the platform amid growing concerns that excessive use is negatively affecting young people.
The Protect Children from Social Media Addiction Act, which passed the Democratic-led state legislature by wide margins last month, would make it illegal for online services or applications to provide “addictive feeds” to minors unless they know the user is underage or have parental consent.
“Every parent knows the harm that social media addiction can cause to their children: isolation from human contact, stress and anxiety, and endless hours wasted late into the night,” Newsom, a Democrat, said in a statement. “With this bill, California is helping protect children and teens from features that are intentionally designed to reinforce these destructive habits.”
The bill defines an “addictive feed” as “an Internet website, online service, online application, or mobile application that recommends, selects, or prioritizes multiple pieces of user-generated or shared media to a user based on information provided by the user or associated with a designated user or user’s device, unless certain conditions are met.”
The law would ban platforms from sending notifications between midnight and 6 a.m. and 8 a.m. and 3 p.m. on weekdays from September through May — times when children are at school — unless users have parental consent. Platforms would have to offer parents the option to select specific times when their children don’t want to receive notifications, limit access to the platform’s feed, see like counts, and set their children’s accounts to private.
The bill cites another California social media law passed in 2022, which “prohibits a company from using a child’s personal information in a manner that the company knows or has reason to know will be seriously harmful to the child’s physical health, mental health, or well-being.” Critics of California’s Age-Appropriate Design Code law say the phrase “significant harm” is too vague and worry it could violate the First Amendment, and the law is facing legal challenges.
A spokesman for state Sen. Nancy Skinner, the Democratic leader who introduced the bill, said the new law does not have a “civil right of action,” meaning any member of the public can sue to enforce the law. Instead, it gives the state attorney general the power to enforce the law through civil lawsuits.
The bill would take effect on Jan. 1, 2027. A spokesman for Skinner said the attorney general plans to draft rules between the signing of the bill and its effective date on penalties for social media companies and details of parental consent for age verification.
A spokesman for Skinner also said the bill would only require age verification if a minor wants to use regular social media settings, rather than settings for minors.
Supporters of the California bill hailed its passage last month, saying it would strengthen children’s online safety and privacy. James P. Steyer, CEO of Common Sense Media, a nonprofit that supports media use by kids, parents and schools, pointed to a positive feature in the bill: it requires social media companies to provide minors with chronological feeds, rather than algorithmic ones.
“That means kids are seeing more of the content their friends and others sign up for, rather than the content they want their kids to see because Meta and other big companies are making big bucks by getting kids online. This bill is good for kids’ mental and physical health,” Steyer said in a press release.
But tech advocacy groups worry about a chilling effect. In a letter to Newsom this month, Amy Voss, director of state and federal relations for NetChoice, said the bill would impede platforms’ ability to exercise editorial discretion “that is core to First Amendment protections.”
“SB 976 prohibits websites from using ‘addictive feeds’ to deliver content to users. But these ‘addictive feeds’ are the result of content being ‘selected’ and ‘prioritized’ for users. Thus, restricting how websites deliver information directly interferes with their editorial discretion,” Vos wrote.
California is the latest state to enact social media regulations due to concerns about children’s use of the platform, but the efforts have been embroiled in legal battles in some states over the constitutionality of the laws. The Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case next term over Texas’ age verification requirements for sexually explicit websites, the outcome of which could help determine the fate of state social media bills that impose strict age verification requirements on online platforms.
Meanwhile, in a sign that some companies are already moving to impose restrictions independent of legislative action, Instagram said this month it would automatically make millions of teen accounts private and implement new “teen account” settings that would limit the type of content that users under the age of 18 can see on the app. Teen users will also receive time-limit reminders to leave the app after an hour of use each day, and the app will go into “sleep mode” by default between 10pm and 7am, muting notifications and sending auto-replies to direct messages.
