Rafaella Oliveira De Lima Two Carlmont students scroll their phones before class. These feeds are built from what each one watches, and will be limited by a new California law in 2027.
A California law is about to change how social media apps decide what teens and kids see on their phones.
Senate Bill 976, the Protecting Our Kids from Social Media Addiction Act, limits personalized feeds for minors, and its age-check requirements take effect Jan. 1. Starting then, apps cannot provide a personalized feed unless they have verified that the user is an adult or that a verified parent agrees.
Eli Brown, a Carlmont history teacher, doesn’t expect the change to transform how students use their phones.
“It might make a small blip of a difference,” Brown said.
Lawmakers see a bigger problem behind the law. The state legislature found that about 95% of 13- to 17-year-olds use at least one social media platform, and more than one third say they use it constantly, according to a federal court order.
Courts have so far declined to block the rules on personalized feeds. Currently, apps only have to follow it when they know a user is under 18, such as when the user provided their age when signing up.
How they will verify users are adults is still being worked out. The California Department of Justice has proposed rules for checking ages, but those rules could change before they are final.
Not everything in the law is moving forward. A federal judge blocked a limit on notifications during school hours in 2024, and the status of that ruling remains unclear.
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Families have every right to block their child from using social media. Period.
— Tyler Fields
That leaves it unclear what students will notice when age checks start. Apps could use methods such as facial analysis or ask a parent to approve a personalized feed, but how that will work is still being decided.
The people on either side of the fight see the stakes differently. Supporters, including the state, say personalized feeds are addictive and that limiting them protects young users. NetChoice, a technology trade group that has fought the law in court, argues it violates the First Amendment and puts families’ data at risk.
“It’s censorship disguised as a child safety bill,” said Tyler Fields, a government affairs associate at NetChoice. “Families have every right to block their child from using social media. Period.”
The law’s target is visible in a Carlmont student’s phone. Sophia Suri Encinas, a sophomore, had not previously heard of the law, but she said that she is familiar with the feed it limits. Encinas said that her For You page is addictive, even after she tried resetting it.
“It just showed me more of the same things,” Encinas said.
Brown said that is no accident; social media companies build their apps to hold attention.
“Everything they do is designed to keep people on their platforms and away from other people’s platforms,” Brown said.
That design, a feed built from what a user has already watched, is exactly what the law targets, and it is what Meta, Google, and TikTok asked a federal judge to protect. On Aug. 5, U.S. District Judge Edward Davila refused to block the restrictive legislation because the companies failed to prove that their platforms constitute legally protected free speech.
NetChoice, the group that first sued over the law, provided a different explanation. Fields said the law goes after speech under the guise of protecting children.
He pointed to the Supreme Court’s decision in Moody v. NetChoice, which protects platforms’ choices and rankings of content. He also raised a second concern, the age checks the law requires, saying they would put families’ information at risk.
“This mandate does create a privacy disaster,” Fields said.
That worry isn’t limited to the tech industry, as Brown said he’s uneasy about where students’ information would end up.
“I’m not super keen on kids uploading their IDs to these massive social media companies,” Brown said.
Some students doubt the checks would work anyway; Sebel Rinco sophomore who uses TikTok and Instagram, said teens would find a way around them.
“Most people I know just ask their parents,” Rincon said.
The rest of the fight is still moving through the courts. Davila first declined to block the feed rules in 2024, and the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals later ruled 3-0 that he was right to deny an injunction against them.
He said his August ruling is preliminary, and further facts could show that provisions now unblocked are unconstitutional. Meta, Google, and TikTok have appealed that ruling, and NetChoice plans to build its case in district court.
“We’re willing to take this case as far as it needs to go,” Fields said.
In the meantime, Brown said the bigger question for students may not be what the law does, but what they do on their own phones.
Brown also said that scrolling is not only a problem for teenagers.
“I often find myself doing that whole doom-scrolling through TikTok thing,” Brown said.
For Brown, the answer starts with honesty about habits, not with a law.
“Are you actually using it a lot? Is it what’s keeping you up at night?” Brown said.
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