(TNND) — The California Assembly unanimously passed a bill Thursday that would ban kids under 16 from using social media platforms featuring “addictive features,” such as notifications, endless scroll and autoplay – all core parts of many popular apps.
The bill, introduced earlier this year by Long Beach Democratic Assemblyman Josh Lowenthal, now heads to the state Senate.
Lowenthal previously expressed confidence that the bill has the bipartisan support needed to become law, and Gov. Gavin Newsom has already voiced support for social media age restrictions.
Lowenthal previously told The National News Desk via his spokespeople 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.”
When introducing the bill on the Assembly floor Thursday, Lowenthal said the average child in California spends five hours a day on social media.
“When you count weekends and holidays, that means there are millions of children in the state of California that are spending more time on social media than they are in school,” he told his fellow lawmakers before the vote.
The bill would require social media platforms featuring so-called addictive features to verify the age of their users and delete accounts for those under 16. Failure to do so could result in financial civil penalties.
The bill would also create an e-safety commission to oversee the implementation of the law and advise California on online safety moving forward.
“This bill is not about cutting off young people from the internet or denying them access to the community,” Lowenthal said Thursday. “Young people deserve the ability to find support and belonging online. But we should reject the false choice that says children must be … exposed to addictive and harmful product designs in order to access those benefits.”
Common Sense Media, which advocates for online protections for children and teens, applauded the bill as support for parents going up against big tech firms and their “business model built on hooking our children.”
“Parents should not have to fight billion-dollar platforms on their own,” Common Sense Media Founder and CEO Jim Steyer said in a statement.
A spokesman for Meta, the parent company of Instagram and Facebook, told TNND via email that social media bans remove parental choice altogether and push teens toward less safe, unregulated parts of the internet.
“Instead of cutting teens off from online communities and information, we support an approach that empowers parents to decide which apps their teens can download, building on the age verification law passed in California last year,” the Meta spokesperson said.
Andrew Selepak, an expert on social media who teaches at the University of Florida, said California’s bill reflects a growing effort by states to address concerns about the addictive nature of social media in the absence of national protections from Congress.
Selepak’s state already passed legislation to prohibit kids under 14 from having social media accounts, though the Florida law has been challenged in court.
But Selepak said the California effort is different than anywhere else because of the state’s size and influence.
California is so big that its law could become the de facto standard for the rest of the country, he said.
“So long as the platforms continue to have their algorithmic timeline and the potential for the endless scroll, they’re going to be addictive,” Selepak said.
He said social media companies will likely offer kid-friendly versions of their platforms, like YouTube Kids, rather than simply ban every young user or fundamentally change their core products.
“The reason why so many people use it and spend so much time on it is the addictive nature. So, they’re not going to get rid of the thing that makes it so profitable, because it’s limited to this smaller, younger segment that will graduate out of it,” Selepak said. “Once you turn 17, you’re not going to keep your kid’s account. You’re going to move into the adult account.”
