Newsom signs sweeping measures to safeguard children’s internet use | #childpredator | #kidsaftey | #childsaftey

Gov. Gavin Newsom on Thursday signed a package of bills to create sweeping internet regulations aimed at protecting kids, including measures that will ban social media platforms from letting children under 16 access addictive feeds and establish a safety framework for children using AI chatbots.

Earlier versions of Assembly Bill 1709 would have forbid social media websites from allowing children under 16 from using their platforms altogether. But the measure Newsom signed was narrowed significantly. Instead, the new law will bar social media companies like Meta and TikTok from letting children under 16 use versions of their websites with “addictive” elements, including autoplay and other features designed to keep a user on the platform or encourage compulsive use. 

The law, which will take effect next year, requires that social media websites verify the age of a user before allowing them to use addictive features. It also requires those websites to delete accounts for users under 16 if they do not create a non-addictive version.

Newsom signed the bills at the popular Bay Area Discovery Museum in Sausalito, a sprawling children’s museum nestled in the woods of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area that features a large playground, art studios and obstacle courses in more than half a dozen buildings. 

“Parents can’t compete, can’t compete with engineering and compete with algorithms, can’t compete,” Newsom said. “You feel like you’re lousy parents.” 

Newsom blasted President Donald Trump and Congress for what he characterized as a failure to act with urgency in addressing the threats of technology on children.

“It’s absurd. But talk about family values. Protecting our kids should be top of the list,” Newsom said. 

Newsom alluded to the challenges in getting the law passed, saying that a book “can be written just on the sausage making on this law,” and calling it “unacceptable.”

Newsom signed the bills at the popular Bay Area Discovery Museum in Sausalito, a sprawling children’s museum nestled in the woods of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area that features a large playground, art studios and obstacle courses in more than half a dozen buildings. 

His signature comes on the heels of a landmark settlement Meta reached with California and most other states over claims it knowingly designed its sites to be addictive to minors and lied about the safety of its products. Meta, the parent company of Instagram and Facebook, agreed to pay up to $18 billion and introduce new child-safety measures to its platforms.

The governor also signed Senate Bill 1119, called Adam’s Law, by Sen. Steve Padilla, D-Chula Vista (San Diego County), which imposes several new requirements for chatbot operators aimed at limiting potentially harmful content for children.

The law, which goes into effect July 2027, will require chatbots operators to regularly verify users’ ages, include crisis support resources to minors who express suicidal ideation or self-harm and promptly notify parents connected to their childrens’ accounts. 

It also directs AI companies to perform risk assessments of any new or updated chatbot design and evaluate its level of safety for minors, describe potential harms it could pose to children and submit independent safety audits to the attorney general. The safety framework and extensive reporting requirements are considered the first of their kind in the nation.

Padilla called the chatbot regulation bill part of the “broadest, most substantial set of protections for children engaging with chatbots and those algorithms in the United States of America.”

The law is named after Adam Raine, a 16-year-old from Orange County who died by suicide in 2024 after weeks of using ChatGPT to discuss his mental health. In written testimony to a U.S. Senate Judiciary subcommittee last year, his father said the AI chatbot offered to write a suicide note and helped the teen survey suicide methods. Raine’s parents launched a landmark suit against OpenAI in California court for their son’s death, alleging negligence and wrongful death. 

The law signed by Newsom Thursday will also create a new legal pathway for families and the state to sue chatbot operators for alleged violations of the new requirements. OpenAI ultimately backed the measure. Ann O’Leary, vice president of Global Policy, said in a statement that the bill establishes “meaningful safeguards” for minors using the technology. O’Leary, who served as Newsom’s chief of staff from 2019 to 2021, said the bill is an opportunity for California to “to set a strong standard for youth AI safety” in lieu of federal regulation. 

Newsom’s signature comes after he declined to sign a more expansive AI safety bill last year, which included similar bans on companies providing chatbots that are capable of encouraging children to contemplate killing themselves, or harming themselves or others. It also would have banned chatbots capable of sexually explicit interactions and other potentially harmful behaviors, and allowed minors and their guardians to sue AI companies for damages if accused of violating the ban. The bill, by Assembly Member Rebecca Bauer-Kahan, D-Orinda, became one of the year’s most fought-over pieces of tech legislation, drawing opposition from tech and AI industry groups, and supported by children’s safety advocates.

In his veto message, Newsom said it was overly broad and risked an unintentional “total ban” on conversational AI tools by minors. 

Newsom’s signature on the social media restrictions comes as he faces heightened pressure to rein in the tech industry, despite his history as an ally to tech companies. Newsom has in the past been wary about signing burdensome regulations on the tech industry, arguing they could stifle innovation. But he’s modified his tune this year as public perception of artificial intelligence, data centers and social media has soured and expressed more willingness to rein in tech.

One day earlier, Newsom signed two bills that add third-party oversight of AI companies and their software development. In a press release announcing the bill signings, Newsom acknowledged the “increasingly urgent concerns about the risks posed by these systems.”

AB1709’s author, Assembly Member Josh Lowenthal, D-Long Beach, led a bipartisan group of lawmakers with school-age children to rally support for the bill. Lowenthal has repeatedly cited research from the platforms themselves that show social media can harm teens’ mental health. He and the other lawmakers who championed the bill have spoken about their experience as parents trying to help their children navigate harm online and often feeling powerless to do so.

“All of us are saying the same thing — we’re saying we don’t have to take it anymore,” Lowenthal said, echoing other lawmakers who gave emotional statements at Thursday’s news conference. “And families in the state of California, you don’t have to take it anymore. It’s not just happening here. It is happening around the country, around the world. We’re all saying the same thing. We’re tired of watching our kids suffer. We want oversight. We want accountability. We’re done asking nicely, and we’re demanding that there is a duty of care across these platforms.”

The measure drew opposition from tech companies and civil liberties groups. Molly Buckley, a legislative analyst for the digital rights advocacy group Electronic Frontier Foundation, said the legislation could put both children and adults at risk by forcing tech companies to collect and store sensitive identification information about their users to comply with the law. 

Some lawmakers who agreed social media can be harmful for children expressed skepticism that a ban could be enforced. Regulators in Australia, where lawmakers imposed a ban on social media for children, are already encountering some of those challenges. An early review of that country’s ban found 85% of teens were circumventing the policy to continue using banned platforms.

Shae Gardner, policy director at LGBT Tech, testified against the measure in committee, arguing it would make it harder for teens, particularly LGBT teens, to find safe communities.

“For so many of our youth, online spaces are more navigable, more private, and ultimately much safer, than some of the offline environments available to them,” she said.

Despite the concerns, the measure passed unanimously in both houses.

Hannah Wiley contributed reporting.