Newsom Signs Law to Protect Children From Social Media Addiction

Updated 1:45 p.m. Saturday

California will make it illegal for social media platforms to knowingly provide addictive feeds to children without parental consent beginning in 2027 under a new law Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Friday.

California follows New York state, which passed a law earlier this year allowing parents to block their kids from getting social media posts suggested by a platform’s algorithm. Utah has passed laws in recent years aimed at limiting children’s access to social media, but they have faced challenges in court.

The California law will take effect in a state home to some of the largest technology companies in the world. Similar proposals have failed to pass in recent years, but Newsom signed a first-in-the-nation law in 2022 barring online platforms from using users’ personal information in ways that could harm children. It is part of a growing push in states across the country to try to address the impacts of social media on the well-being of children.

“Every parent knows the harm social media addiction can inflict on their children — isolation from human contact, stress and anxiety, and endless hours wasted late into the night,” Newsom said in a statement. “With this bill, California is helping protect children and teenagers from purposely designed features that feed these destructive habits.”

The law bans platforms from sending notifications without permission from parents to minors between 12 a.m. and 6 a.m., and between 8 a.m. and 3 p.m. on weekdays from September through May, when children are typically in school. The legislation also makes platforms set children’s accounts to private by default.

Opponents of the legislation say it could inadvertently prevent adults from accessing content if they cannot verify their age. Some argue it would threaten online privacy by making platforms collect more information on users.

The law defines an “addictive feed” as a website or app “in which multiple pieces of media generated or shared by users are, either concurrently or sequentially, recommended, selected, or prioritized for display to a user based, in whole or in part, on information provided by the user, or otherwise associated with the user or the user’s device,” with some exceptions.

The subject garnered renewed attention in June when U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy called on Congress to require warning labels on social media platforms and their impacts on young people. Attorneys general in 42 states endorsed the plan in a letter sent to Congress last week.

State Sen. Nancy Skinner, a Democrat representing Berkeley who authored the California law, said after lawmakers approved the bill last month that “social media companies have designed their platforms to addict users, especially our kids.”

“With the passage of SB 976, the California Legislature has sent a clear message: When social media companies won’t act, it’s our responsibility to protect our kids,” she said in a statement.

In an interview with KQED Saturday, Skinner said studies show that the more hours kids spent on social media, the higher were the rates of depression, low self-esteem and anxiety.

“[The bill is] really designed to not control content, but rather to have the kids be the ones who are determining what they want to look for in the information that they search, rather than the social media platforms determining what information gets directed to them through what we now commonly call addictive feeds,” said Skinner.

Skinner said that while social media companies have claimed not to know what age their users are, she says these companies have testified in court that they do in fact have that information and that it has come up in subpoenaed records.

“That shows they know. So our attorney general will set those regulations. But I think that it’s been pretty well proven that that’s really how they target ads, target content. They pretty much know the age of users.”

Juan Carlos Lara of KQED and Associated Press writer Trân Nguyễn contributed to this report.