Something awful happened to the mental health of America’s youth around 2010. Rates of anxiety and depression spiked, as did incidents of self-harm, particularly among girls and young women.
Experts debate why, but this deterioration strongly correlates with the rise of social media and smartphones. Now California lawmakers are on the verge of doing something about it.
AB 1709 would bar kids 16 and younger from having profiles on platforms that use addictive algorithms. Addictive algorithms are defined as a “psychologically exploitative feature intended to maximize engagement that foreseeably leads to compulsive use.”
You don’t need a Ph.D. to see the problem — spend a week or two on social media, and the perils are obvious. Feeds used to be built from what users liked and followed. Now, as anyone on X knows, most of what shows up has little to do with what users chose.
Instead, feeds often devolve into a stream of rage-porn or envy-bait — or worse. In 2023, the Wall Street Journal found that Meta’s algorithm catered to pedophiles and connected networks of pedophiles in the same way Meta connects many groups of people with common interests.
It doesn’t take much academic research to see the downsides for society, but especially for kids. Courts have started to hold social media companies liable for some of the negative effects caused by their products. AB 1709 is another logical step.
Libertarians argue that it is up to parents to monitor child usage of social media. Fair point, but the internet is everywhere, and kids can get around parental controls too easily. Parents can’t do it alone.
In AB 1709’s bill analysis, opponents argue that there are many factors to the youth mental health crisis “and any ‘solution’ that ignores the scientific research, the individualized nature of mental health and the many other stressors impacting young people today, like academic pressure, school safety, socio-economic challenges, and substance abuse, is not actually responsive to this complex problem.”
They have a point too. But since when is “this doesn’t solve everything” a reason not to fix what it does solve?
It’s hard to see much upside from youth engagement on addictive platforms. Turning to the bill analysis again, opponents say this would “sever youth in marginalized communities from their online communities.” But is that so? I’m not convinced addictive algorithms are what holds those communities together, and the mental health data doesn’t support that conclusion either. Plus, kids would still have access to the internet and social media, just not through personalized profiles.
Lawmakers already took one strong action in 2024 by restricting the use of smartphones in classrooms, citing unnecessary distractions from learning and similar negative mental health outcomes. The same libertarian argument comes up here too – it’s on parents to teach responsible use – but it falls short for the same reason: parents aren’t in the room.
AB 1709 is co-authored by local Republican Assemblymembers Joe Patterson and Josh Hoover. Hoover was a driving force behind the smartphone ban in schools.
Above all, it’s really hard to make a compelling case why kids need to maintain the same level of access to addictive social media platforms and smartphones. Humans got by for eons with neither – it’s fair to conclude humanity hasn’t changed so much in the past decade or two that kids can’t still survive on limited doses of social media and smartphones.
If AB 1709 passes, California will join a handful of states that have tried similar laws — most struck down in court on First Amendment grounds before they were tested. AB 1709 is written to survive that fate by tying its restriction to addictive design rather than content, following the same legal theory a court recently upheld for Florida’s under-14 law.
Curbing social media use among kids is a moral imperative. Lawmakers should act immediately by passing this bill.
Matt Fleming is an opinion writer living in Placer County. You can follow him on X @Flemingwords or connect via email: flemingwords@gmail.com.
