(TNND) — California lawmakers are moving forward with a bill that could effectively ban social media accounts for kids under 16 in the nation’s most populous state.
The bill, AB-1709, is specifically designed to keep children off platforms featuring “addictive features,” such as notifications, endless scrolls and autoplay that are core parts of popular social media apps.
The bill was introduced earlier this year by Assemblyman Josh Lowenthal, a Democrat representing Long Beach, and has cleared two committees in the last week. Lowenthal’s office said the bill is on track to pass the full Assembly next month.
Gov. Gavin Newsom has already voiced support for social media age restrictions, and Lowenthal is confident his bill has enough bipartisan backing in the Legislature to become law this summer.
Lowenthal said via his spokespeople Wednesday that social media companies have “unfettered access to vulnerable, developing minds” and that they “have adopted design choices that malignantly target users’ neurological systems, leading to addiction, depression, and, in grave circumstances, death.”
He said his bill addresses that “evolving public health crisis.”
California Assemblyman Josh Lowenthal is seen in a photo provided by his office.
Under the law, a platform featuring so-called addictive features would have to verify the age of its users and delete accounts for those under 16, or they could face unspecified penalties.
Lowenthal said social media use among teenagers is widespread, and it’s “wreaking havoc on the minds of our youth.”
Pew Research Center surveys have found that teens themselves are recognizing the potential harms of social media.
And the former surgeon general pushed for warning labels on social media over mental health concerns.
The Pew Research Center says a majority of teens visit YouTube and TikTok daily, with half and nearly half doing so for Instagram and Snapchat, respectively.
Between 12% and 16% of teens told the Pew Research Center that they use either TikTok, YouTube, Snapchat or Instagram almost constantly.
California isn’t the first state to tackle the issue of age-restricted social media use. Florida, for example, has already passed legislation to prohibit kids under 14 from having social media accounts. The Florida law has been challenged in court.
The California bill has both supporters and opponents.
The Civil Justice Association of California is among the groups against the bill. CJAC President and CEO Jaime Huff said the bill raises serious constitutional concerns by restricting access to lawful speech.
“Protecting kids online is important, but banning minors from broad swaths of the internet is not the answer,” Huff said in an emailed statement.
She added that the bill “substitutes a blunt government mandate for the protections families actually need. California should pursue real online safety solutions – stronger parental tools and better safeguards – without cutting young people off from the digital world altogether.”
But Common Sense Media, which advocates for online protections for children and teens, said state governments need to step up to protect kids in the absence of federal guardrails on social media companies.
And Common Sense Media Founder and CEO Jim Steyer said this bill checks all the boxes.
“This bill prohibits platforms that use addictive feeds from allowing children under 16 to hold accounts. And we’re not regulating what kids can say online. We are regulating how these multi-billion-dollar platforms can target them through predatory product design,” Steyer said. “And platforms can still serve younger users. That’s fine. They just have to remove the addictive mechanics to do that. And that’s a choice they’ve always been able to make.”
Photo illustration by Leon Neal/Getty Images, file
Common Sense Media had a hand in crafting the California bill, which Steyer sees as a national standard for other states to follow.
He also said the California bill follows in the footsteps of the Australian social media ban for kids under 16.
Steyer said there’s momentum to hold social media companies accountable for the alleged harms to users.
A California jury in March found Meta and Google, the companies behind Instagram and YouTube, respectively, negligent in a landmark case, awarding millions to a woman who said she became addicted to their platforms as a child and suffered depression.
And a New Mexico jury ordered Meta to pay hundreds of millions of dollars, finding the company misled users about platform safety and failed to adequately protect children.
“The problem is pretty clear. These platforms, the social media platforms, are engineered to be addictive through predatory design,” Steyer said. “And the industry knows it. The platforms know that. There’s infinite scroll. There’s autoplay. There’s algorithmic feeds. These are hooks that are designed to target and addict kids. And no parent can compete with the billions of dollars and millions of hours of engineers and behavioral scientists whose entire job for the social media platforms is to maximize engagement. And that’s why you need a law to step in.”
