California enacts new restrictions on addictive social-media features for children

A broader child-safety package

California Governor Gavin Newsom signed a package of technology laws on September 10 that places new restrictions on how social-media services and artificial-intelligence chatbots may interact with children. The measures include Assembly Bill 1709, which bars covered platforms from supplying users under 16 with features such as infinite scrolling and automatic video playback. The legislation treats interface design as a safety issue rather than focusing only on individual pieces of harmful content.

The package also creates additional safeguards for companion chatbots and expands legal protections addressing digitally altered or AI-generated sexual images of minors. Taken together, the bills move beyond parental-control tools and impose duties directly on technology companies. California's size and concentration of major technology businesses mean the rules may affect product decisions well beyond the state, even if companies later challenge parts of the package in court.

Design choices enter the regulatory spotlight

The central argument behind the social-media measure is that continuous feeds, autoplay and personalised recommendations can prolong use in ways that are especially consequential for children. European regulators have reached a similar preliminary conclusion. In July, the European Commission said Instagram and Facebook may have breached the Digital Services Act through design elements including infinite scroll, autoplay, notifications and recommendation systems, while failing to assess and mitigate risks adequately.

That European finding does not verify California's legislative action, but it shows the state is acting within a broader international regulatory shift. Authorities are increasingly examining whether platforms' basic architecture creates foreseeable risks. This approach differs from requiring companies only to remove unlawful posts after publication: it asks whether default settings and engagement systems are themselves appropriate for young users.

Implementation and legal challenges

Civil-liberties and technology groups have raised concerns that enforcing age-based restrictions could require intrusive identity checks or constrain lawful expression. Those objections will shape implementation and any constitutional litigation. Regulators will need to determine how services can identify younger users without collecting excessive personal data, and how broadly terms such as addictive features should be interpreted as products evolve.

The next significant stage is rulemaking and preparation for compliance. Companies must decide whether to build California-specific experiences or apply similar defaults more widely. Courts may eventually determine how the new duties interact with free-speech and federal-law protections. For policymakers elsewhere, California will become a test of whether design-focused safeguards can reduce risks to children without producing a new layer of privacy problems.