{"id":336428,"date":"2026-05-28T20:32:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-28T20:32:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/336428\/"},"modified":"2026-05-28T20:32:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-28T20:32:09","slug":"california-bill-to-ban-social-media-for-teens-under-16-passes-assembly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/336428\/","title":{"rendered":"California bill to ban social media for teens under 16 passes Assembly"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Social<\/p>\n

Social media companies would be barred from allowing children under 16 to create accounts on their platforms under a bill passed by California lawmakers Thursday<\/p>\n

Elisa Schu\/Picture Alliance via Getty Images<\/p>\n

Social media companies would be barred from allowing children under 16 to create accounts on their platforms under a bill passed by California lawmakers Thursday in a dramatic rebuke from the home state of the country\u2019s tech industry.<\/p>\n

The bill\u2019s passage in the state Assembly represents a significant step state lawmakers are taking to enact a ban similar to one implemented last year in Australia amid growing concern about social media\u2019s effect on children\u2019s mental health. It also comes as social media companies, including Meta, TikTok and Youtube, face a slew of lawsuits alleging their platforms harmed young users.<\/p>\n

Assembly Bill 1709<\/a> would ban social media companies from allowing children under 16 to create accounts on platforms with features defined as addictive, including notifications, endless scroll, algorithm-generated feeds and autoplay. It would also create an advisory commission within the California Department of Justice to help implement the bill.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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The measure is championed by a bipartisan group of lawmakers who all have school-aged children and say they feel increasingly powerless as they try to protect their kids from harm online. During debates on the bill, the coauthors have repeatedly referenced their own experiences as parents\u00a0\u2014 trying and failing to prohibit their teens from spending time on YouTube, their kids arguing they should have cell phones because their friends do and watching them struggle with pressures from peers that follow them home through their social media accounts.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese products, the entire business model is built on creating addiction. That\u2019s how they make money,\u201d said Assembly Member Buffy Wicks, an Oakland Democrat who is part of the coalition pushing for the measure. \u201cLet\u2019s pass this bill unanimously with bipartisan support and send a message, not just to the world, but to the tech industry, that they have to keep our children safe.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Assembly Member Josh Lowenthal, the lead author, noted that kids spend more time on screens than they do in school. One 2021 study, by advocacy group Common Sense Media<\/a>, found that teens spend an average of eight hours per day on screens. Common Sense Media is one of the sponsors of the bill.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Lowenthal pointed to a laundry list of problems facing the current generation of teens. Rates of eating disorders, depression and anxiety are on the rise.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\u201cI haven\u2019t come across a single parent anywhere in the state of California that is not deeply concerned about this and doesn\u2019t know what to do,\u201d Lowenthal told the Chronicle in an interview earlier this year.<\/p>\n

Lowenthal, who has daughters in sixth, eighth and 10th grades, said he sees firsthand the harm that social media does to children. He said girls especially are barraged with unrealistic and sometimes AI-generated images of women\u2019s bodies at a time when they\u2019re feeling especially self-conscious about their own bodies.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can\u2019t tell you what an awful feeling it is to go into one of your kid\u2019s rooms at eight in the evening and they\u2019re by themselves completely stressed out,\u201d Lowenthal said. \u201cThe challenge of social media and its addictive properties is that it follows you everywhere. When I was growing up, when I was home, I had complete relief. I was in a safe place. The pressures and challenges of growing up abated when I was home with my family. It\u2019s not the case anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n

The bill has drawn opposition from a range of groups funded by the tech industry, including Chamber of Progress and Technet. It has also generated opposition from civil liberties and free speech advocates.<\/p>\n

Molly Buckley, a legislative analyst for the digital rights advocacy group Electronic Frontier Foundation, said the ban wouldn\u2019t address the harms lawmakers are identifying, which are often broader mental health issues that are not caused by social media alone.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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She also argued the legislation could put both children and adults at risk by forcing tech companies to collect and store sensitive identification information about their users to comply with the law. Such data would be very attractive to identity thieves, especially the data from children, whose data could be exploited to fraudulently open lines of credit that could be used for years before they come of age and realize their information has been stolen.<\/p>\n

\u201cParents groups are usually convinced that age verification or social media bans are the silver bullet to kids\u2019 online safety,\u201d Buckley said. \u201cThey actually just create more risk for kids and adults while taking that decision power over what\u2019s best for each individual young person out of the family\u2019s hands where it should belong.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some lawmakers who agree social media can be harmful for children have expressed skepticism that a ban could be enforced. Regulators in Australia are already encountering some of those challenges. An early review of that country\u2019s ban last month found two-thirds of teens were circumventing the policy to continue using social media<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we could wave a magic wand and pass a ban and just keep kids off this stuff, I actually would be pretty happy about that,\u201d Assembly Member Cottie Petrie-Norris, an Irvine Democrat who has two teenage sons, said during a committee hearing last month. \u201cI\u2019m concerned that kids are smarter than we are, they\u2019re gonna get around this, and they\u2019re gonna be on these platforms anyway.\u201d<\/p>\n

Assembly Member Alexandra Macedo, one of the Legislature\u2019s youngest members at 32, noted that she easily circumvented an age restriction when she was 12 to make her own MySpace account. During a committee hearing on the measure in April, the Tulare Republican raised privacy and free-speech concerns about the proposal and cautioned that she thought the measure wasn\u2019t fully baked.<\/p>\n

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\u201cI\u2019m in my 30s and can tell you it\u2019s tough to be on social media,\u201d she said. \u201cI can\u2019t imagine being a teenage girl and going through it, let alone a parent feeling helpless in how you can help your child. I just think we have a little ways to go.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the end, both Macedo and Petrie-Norris ultimately voted for the bill on Thursday. It passed the state Assembly 72 to 0. It still must be passed by the state Senate by the end of August. But after that, Gov. Gavin Newsom has indicated he supports the measure.<\/p>\n

At a news conference in February, he said he has discussed the issue with leaders from Spain and Australia as countries across the globe confront the issue of children\u2019s safety online. He underscored his concern by telling a story about a birthday party where one of his daughters and her friends were all sitting silently on their phones instead of speaking with one another, and how worried that made him.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs a father, as a parent, we need help. We have a generation that\u2019s never been more anxious, less free, more stressed, and we have to address this issue,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m very grateful the Legislature is taking this very seriously.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Social media companies would be barred from allowing children under 16 to create accounts on their platforms under…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":336429,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7,9,8,13],"class_list":["post-336428","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-california","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-news","tag-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/336428","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=336428"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/336428\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/336429"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=336428"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=336428"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=336428"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}