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Starting January 1, California plans to block personalized feeds and autoplay on social media for everyone under 16, even if their parents give permission. That means parents who are comfortable letting their 15-year-old use TikTok’s For You page or watch recommended YouTube videos will no longer have that choice. The law also requires platforms to check ages before allowing those features, potentially affecting adults, too.
Google, Meta, and TikTok filed separate federal lawsuits on November 4 to stop the law, Assembly Bill 1709, arguing that California is overriding both their First Amendment rights and parents’ authority. Unless a court intervenes, the restrictions take effect January 1, 2027.
A personalized feed is a stream of posts and videos an app selects for you based on what you’ve watched, liked, and followed: TikTok’s For You page, Instagram’s recommended posts, YouTube’s home page. Autoplay is the next video starting on its own when the last one ends. AB 1709 labels both “addictive features” and lets the California attorney general add more features to that list by regulation.
Teens under 16 could keep their accounts as long as those accounts have none of these features, and exceptions in the law still allow searching, private messages, and pulling up a specific video or account they ask for. If a platform doesn’t remove the restricted features, it must delete the teen’s account and the personal information tied to it.
The law applies to California residents wherever they happen to be. In its complaint (PDF), TikTok argues it could be penalized for showing its For You feed to a 15-year-old Californian who downloads the app at summer camp in New England. The penalties are steep: the attorney general or a local prosecutor can seek up to $50,000 per affected minor for a knowing violation and up to $25,000 per minor for a negligent one.
What the companies argue
In addition to the First Amendment claims, the companies argue that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, the federal law that shields platforms from liability for what their users post, also protects their decisions about how to select and display that content, and therefore overrides California’s rules.
Each company also points to protections it already offers. Google claims its recommendation system screens out content that isn’t age-appropriate, and removing personalization “would increase the risk that young users are exposed to content that is not appropriate for them.” YouTube says autoplay is off by default for every user under 18. While TikTok limits accounts registered to users under 18 to a 60-minute daily screen-time limit by default.
Meta’s complaint goes further and lays out new defaults it plans for teens “in the coming months.” They include a two-hour daily time limit shared across Facebook and Instagram and making a non-personalized feed the default for teens.
But these changes aren’t simply voluntary measures Meta is introducing in response to California’s new law. They are part of an August multistate settlement over allegations that Facebook and Instagram harmed children through addictive features.
How the age checks would work
Starting January 1, 2027, California will require operating systems such as iOS, Android, Windows, and macOS to collect age information from people setting up new devices. Social media apps will be able to request that information to determine whether someone is under 13, 13 to 15, 16 to 17, or 18 and older, without seeing their actual birth date.
How this will work in practice is still unclear. Companies have until July 1, 2027, to bring the age-checking feature to existing devices, and California hasn’t finalized the rules for how social media platforms can determine someone’s age when that information isn’t available. It’s also unclear how operating systems will identify California residents or whether people outside the state will encounter the same age checks.
Will the new restrictions take effect January 1?
The companies have already lost an early round over California’s previous social media law. In August, a federal judge refused to block its personalized-feed restrictions, ruling that the companies hadn’t shown they were likely to violate free speech protections. The companies have appealed.
What parents can control now
I believe California’s law goes too far by overriding parents who have reviewed an app and decided a personalized feed is fine for their 15-year-old. Showing non-personalized feeds should be the default for teens, but parents should still have the option to make the decisions that are right for them and their children.
You don’t need to wait for a court to set up parental controls for your child. YouTube’s supervised teen accounts let parents set a daily time limit on Shorts, from zero minutes up to two hours. TikTok’s Family Pairing links your account to your teen’s so you can set screen-time limits, filter keywords, and turn on Restricted Mode. Meta’s Family Center lets parents set time limits and restrict use during certain hours on Instagram, Facebook, and Threads. On Instagram, parents can also see which accounts their teen follows.
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