Newsom signs bill to regulate social media use among children

By CNN Newsource

Published September 21, 2024 8:34 AM

By Shania Shelton, CNN

(CNN) — California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Friday signed a bill that aims to reduce social media use among children, the latest state effort to regulate the medium over increasing concerns that heavy use is damaging to young people.

The Protecting Our Kids from Social Media Addiction Act makes it unlawful for online services and applications to provide an “addictive feed” to a minor, unless they are unaware the user is underage or have obtained parental consent. It passed the Democratic-led state Legislature by comfortable margins last month.

“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, a Democrat, said in a statement. “With this bill, California is helping protect children and teenagers from purposely designed features that feed these destructive habits.”

The bill defines an “addictive feed” as “an internet website, online service, online application or mobile application in which multiple pieces of media generated or shared by users are recommended, selected, or prioritized for display to a user based on information provided by the user, or otherwise associated with the user or the user’s device, as specified, unless any of certain conditions are met.”

It bans notifications from platforms from midnight to 6 a.m. and between 8 a.m. and 3 p.m. on weekdays from September through May, times when children are in school, unless the user has parental consent. Platforms must allow parents the option to choose specific hours for their child to not receive notifications, limit access to the platform’s feed, view the number of “likes” and set their child’s account to private.

The bill, citing a different California social media law that passed in 2022, “prohibits the business from using the personal information of any child in a way that the business knows, or has reason to know, is materially detrimental to the physical health, mental health, or well-being of a child.” Critics of the California Age-Appropriate Design Code Act have pointed to the “materially detrimental” language as too vague and fear violations of the First Amendment, and the legislation has faced legal challenges.

A spokesperson for state Sen. Nancy Skinner, a Democrat who sponsored the bill, said the new law doesn’t have a “private right of action,” which allows any member of the public to file suit to enforce a law. Instead, it authorizes the state attorney general to enforce it via civil actions.

The bill takes effect on January 1, 2027. Skinner’s spokesperson said the attorney general has between the bill’s signing and its effective date to create the rules around how a social media company would be penalized and the specifics of parental consent for age verification.

Skinner’s spokesperson also said the bill will require age verification only if a minor wants to use regular social media settings instead of the settings for minors.

Supporters of California’s bill praised the passage last month and say it will strengthen kids’ online safety and privacy. James P. Steyer, the CEO of Common Sense Media, a nonprofit organization that helps kids, parents and schools navigate media, pointed to the fact that the bill requires social media companies to offer minors chronological feeds instead of algorithmic feeds as a positive feature.

“That means that kids will see more content that they choose to see – from their friends or others that they signed up to see – rather than what Meta and other large companies want kids to see because they make so much money off of keeping them hooked online. This bill is good for kids’ mental and physical health,” Steyer said in a press release.

Technology advocacy groups, however, fear a chilling effect. Amy Bos, NetChoice’s director of state and federal affairs, wrote in a letter to Newsom this month that the bill interferes with platforms’ ability to engage in editorial discretion, which is “at the core of the First Amendment’s protection.”

“SB 976 prohibits websites from using ‘addictive feeds’ to disseminate content to their users. But these ‘addictive feeds’ are the result of content being ‘selected’ and ‘prioritized’ to the users. In short, restricting how websites disseminate information directly interferes with their ability to engage in editorial discretion,” Bos wrote.

California is the latest state to enact social media regulations over concerns about use among children, though efforts in some states have run into legal challenges over the laws’ constitutionality. The Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case next term involving Texas’ age-verification requirements for sexually explicit websites, the outcome of which could help determine the fate of state social media bills that impose stringent age-verification requirements on online platforms.

Meanwhile, in a sign that some companies are already moving to impose restrictions independent of legislative action, Instagram announced this month that it will implement new “teen account” settings that will automatically make millions of teen accounts private and restrict what kinds of content all users under the age of 18 can view on the app. Teen users will also receive time limit reminders nudging them to leave after spending one hour on the app each day, and the app will default to “sleep mode,” muting notifications and sending automatic replies to direct messages, between 10 p.m. and 7 a.m.