On 10th September, the new restrictions that ban social media platforms from containing features that can be addictive for children under 16 and toys with AI companion chatbots were signed into law by California Governor Gavin Newsom.
The two measures, along with 11 other bills, are part of a package of 13 that Newsom signed into law to help protect young people from technology that could put them at risk, including more protections for minors’ online privacy.
An additional measure extended the definition of child sexual abuse material to cover anything that was “digitally altered” or “created using artificial intelligence” that “represents a person who is under the age of 18 engaging in sexual conduct.”
This other law prohibits, for the next four years, the production and sale of children’s toys with an accompanying chatbot. Parental control measures for chatbot programmes and other safety and risk assessments are required.
Newsom touted those regulations as the most far-reaching of their kind in the nation. The bill was dubbed “Adam’s Law,” in memory of Adam Raine, a 16-year-old boy who took his own life in April 2025 after he acted, according to his parents, on suicidal thoughts validated in months of discussion with OpenAI’s ChatGPT program.
OpenAI stated it aims to enhance ChatGPT protections, which it admits became “less reliable” as it’s used with longer interactions.
Newsom, a Democrat, said in a statement announcing the measures that “we want our children—and every California child—to live in a world where technology promotes their health, not plays with their weaknesses.”
California, which is the home to internet giants such as Google, Meta Platforms and Snap Inc., is the latest U.S. state to take action against business practices deemed to be intentionally targeting teenagers to keep them hooked on social media – even though there is evidence that heavy usage is negatively impacting mental health.
The bill was passed with wide bipartisan support, but some critics argued it was a waste of time and a limitation on youth access to the internet, such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which labelled the bill “a massive privacy and free speech nightmare.”
Utah was the first state to pass legislation about kids and social media, and others have followed suit, including Arkansas, Louisiana, Ohio, Texas, Florida and New York, but in different ways.
The following tags have been added to the targeted pages of this site: ‘psychologically exploitative’.
Countries globally have also taken steps to limit children’s exposure to harmful content online, such as a ban in Australia on social media websites for those under 16 years of age.
California has a different version, Assembly Bill 1709, which bans children under 16 from being exposed to a variety of “psychologically exploitative features intended to maximise engagement” that are “foreseeable to lead to compulsive use.”
Those include infinite-scroll feeds, algorithmic autoplay and other features that will be specified in upcoming rules.
It follows a period in which Big Tech is becoming more willing to accept new restrictions amid a growing number of legal challenges.
Seven weeks ago, Meta reached a settlement with almost every U.S. state to stop civil litigation alleging that it caters to children’s addiction to its Facebook and Instagram apps by agreeing to pay up to $18 billion over 10 years and impose strict restrictions on teens’ use of the services.
