Gov. Gavin Newsom high-fives schoolchildren while holding up the signed Assembly Bill 126 at Willett Elementary School in Davis on Thursday, July 9, 2026. The bill will increase funding for special education across the state. Newsom signed a group of bills on Thursday, Sept. 10, to regulate how social media and AI companies interact with kids.
rbyer@sacbee.com
Gov. Gavin Newsom on Thursday signed bills to what social media platforms look like for young Californians and put restrictions on chatbot makers, as part of what he called a larger effort to make children safer online.
“This is all personal for me,” the governor, a father of four, said during a news conference near San Francisco. “None of this is academic.”
Measures he approved included high-profile bills that sailed through the Legislature last month with strong bipartisan support.
Assembly Bill 1709 will require social media platforms to provide versions to children under 16 years old that do not include personalized feeds driven by algorithms, autoplaying videos and other features. And Assembly Bill 2 would increase the penalties for social media companies who are found to have injured children.
Both were authored by Assemblymember Josh Lowenthal, D-Long Beach, who the governor called his “legislator of the year.”
“The pace of technology is moving faster than government can put guardrails in,” Lowenthal said. “That’s left families across the state struggling to figure out how to keep their kids safe.”
The measures could still face legal challenges.
Zach Lilly, director of government affairs at NetChoice, a trade group that represents Meta, Google and TikTok, said in a statement the bills “expand California’s well-established animosity towards free expression and the First Amendment.”
The group has sued the state several times over bills it does not like.
“The state cannot simply describe speech as addictive and then claim a right to regulate access to it,” Lilly added. “Whether the governor and legislature choose to respect it, Californians have a right to express themselves, and NetChoice will continue to fight for that right.”
Newsom Thursday also approved measures that would prevent companies for four years from selling and making toys for children under 16 years old that include chatbots, Senate Bill 867, and require operators of the technology to audit if their products are potentially harming children, Senate Bill 1119. Both were authored by state Sen. Steve Padilla, D-Chula Vista, and the latter was inspired by the death of Adam Raine who was 16 when he killed himself last year after discussing his suicidal thoughts with ChatGPT.
“Powerful AI companionship chatbots were unleashed on our kids with vastly inadequate protections,” said Maria Raine, Adam’s mother, at the news conference. “Adam was an early adopter of AI and so many of us parents did not understand the dangers back then. Now we are all becoming more aware of the dangers of AI companionship.”
Newsom also signed bills that would require social media companies and other businesses that provide online products regularly used by children to take steps to prevent minors from content that could cause psychological, emotional or physical harm and prevent schools from only using social media platforms that rely on algorithm-based fees to contact students or their parents.
This story was originally published September 10, 2026 at 2:28 PM.
Stephen Hobbs
The Sacramento Bee
Stephen Hobbs is an enterprise reporter for The Sacramento Bee’s Capitol Bureau. He has worked for newspapers in Colorado, Florida and South Carolina.
