California is about to make it illegal to algorithmically addict a child, and then let that child's parents take the company to court over it. Two bills targeting social media's most predatory features cleared the State Senate Appropriations Committee this week and could hit Governor Gavin Newsom's desk before August 31, according to KCRA.
What the Bills Actually Do
AB 1709 would prohibit social media platforms from offering addictive features to users under 16. That means auto-scroll, infinite scroll, the algorithmic notification firehose, all of it. Platforms would still be allowed to exist for minors, but they'd have to offer stripped-down options like chronological timelines instead of the engagement-maximizing slot machine experience Silicon Valley has spent two decades perfecting.
AB 2 is the sharper edge. The New York Post reports the bill would give parents and children the right to sue platforms directly for civil penalties and damages if a minor is harmed. That's not a government fine landing on some corporate balance sheet to be written off as a cost of doing business. That's a lawsuit from an actual family, in an actual courtroom, arguing their kid was hurt.
Both bills were written by Assemblyman Josh Lowenthal, a Long Beach Democrat who framed the issue with exactly the kind of specificity that tends to move legislation: he cited data showing children spend an average of five hours a day on social media. Factor in weekends and holidays, he argued, and a lot of kids are spending more time scrolling than sitting in a classroom.
The Man Behind the Bills Is Worried About His Own Kids
Lowenthal told California Politics 360, as cited by KCRA, that the public appetite for this kind of regulation has genuinely surprised him. "There's really been a sea change that's taking place over the last couple of years. And parents up and down the state, across the aisle from every geography, every religion, every background that you can think of, all want the same thing. They want regulation. They want action. They're worried about their kids."
He didn't stop at legislator-speak. "I'm worried about my kids," he said, "and we really need to do something." That's the kind of statement that sounds simple until you remember how rarely elected officials admit personal fear about the policies they're debating. It lands differently than the usual talking points.
The political coalition here is worth paying attention to. This is not a left-wing crusade that the right will reflexively oppose. Children's screen time has become one of the few genuinely bipartisan anxieties in American politics, something that unites evangelical parents in Fresno with progressive parents in San Francisco. That consensus is exactly what Lowenthal is betting on.
The Tech Industry Is Already Lawyering Up
Shocking absolutely no one, the tech industry opposes both bills. The New York Post reports the industry is citing concerns about potential lawsuits and First Amendment issues, which is the standard-issue legal objection whenever any government anywhere tries to put a leash on a platform.
The First Amendment argument is real enough to take seriously, even if you find it cynical. Courts have been skeptical of laws that restrict how platforms curate and present content, treating algorithmic feeds as a form of protected speech. That's the same argument that has tangled up previous youth online safety legislation in the federal courts. Lowenthal's team will need the language of these bills to be precise if they want them to survive a legal challenge, and tech companies have very expensive lawyers whose entire job is to find the imprecision.
The litigation threat in AB 2 is particularly likely to draw fire. Giving private citizens the ability to sue platforms for harm is a different animal than a regulatory fine. It's unpredictable, potentially enormous in scale, and impossible for a company to fully model or contain. Which is, arguably, the point.
Who Gets Left Out of the Conversation
Not everyone is cheering. The New York Post notes that some youth advocacy groups, specifically including LGBTQ and neurodivergent communities, have raised concerns that the legislation could make it harder for young people to connect online.
This is a legitimate tension that deserves more than a footnote. For a lot of queer teenagers, particularly those in rural or conservative areas, social media is not a frivolous entertainment product. It is a lifeline. The community of kids who found other people like them online, and who credit that access with getting them through adolescence, is not a small or imaginary group.
Same goes for neurodivergent youth, who sometimes find asynchronous online communication easier to manage than the exhausting chaos of in-person social interaction. A bill designed to protect kids can still hurt specific kids if it's written without thinking carefully about which kids depend on these platforms most. That's not an argument against regulation. It's an argument for regulation that's been actually thought through.
Where This Goes Next
The full State Senate will vote within the next two weeks on whether the bills move forward to Newsom's desk. The legislative session ends August 31, so the clock is short.
Newsom has already signaled which direction he's leaning. In his State of the State address, he cited Australia's restrictions on children's social media access as a model and called for California to do more. That's not a governor telegraphing a veto. California going this route would carry enormous national weight. What California law requires, technology companies tend to build for everyone, because the market is too big to carve out separately. If these bills become law and survive legal challenge, they could effectively reshape the product for American kids across the country, not just the ones in California.
The Dingo Take
Let's be precise about what we're discussing here. The social media industry spent billions of dollars and decades of engineering talent specifically to make their products as difficult to stop using as possible. They studied the behavioral psychology, they hired the addiction researchers, they ran the A/B tests, and they built the machine. Now they are arguing in court that regulating that machine is a free speech issue. The audacity is, genuinely, impressive in a way that makes you want to lie down on the floor.
The bills have real weaknesses. The First Amendment challenges are not frivolous. The concerns from LGBTQ and neurodivergent advocates are not frivolous either. Legislation written in a hurry before a session deadline, targeting technology that moves faster than any lawmaker can track, has a solid historical track record of creating new problems while solving old ones. All of that is true and worth watching.
But five hours a day. Children. Every day. On products engineered to make them scroll for five hours a day. At some point the question stops being whether regulation is perfect and starts being whether doing nothing is acceptable. California is at least trying to answer it. The tech companies are hoping the courts will let them keep the slot machines running until the kids age out.
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