California’s governor on Thursday signed into law restrictions on addictive social media technology and interactions with harmful artificial intelligence chatbots, ushering in some of the strongest online protections for young users in the United States.
Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, signed a bill that prohibits social media platforms from providing addictive features to users younger than 16, the first law of its kind in the nation. He also signed a new law that mandated AI companies disclose to young users whenever they engaged with a chatbot, not a human, and to restrict dangerous content on topics like self-harm.
The measures are among more than a dozen digital safety laws the governor signed Thursday, saying that it was too hard for parents alone to protect their children from powerful algorithms.
“It’s a good day for our children,” Newsom said at the signing ceremony. “It’s a good day for the state of California.”
Regulators around the world are racing to create online guardrails for minors amid a growing consensus that social media and AI pose increasing risks for young users.
The new California laws build on the passage of more than two dozen child safety social media and AI bills this year in state legislatures. France, Britain, Indonesia and Greece have also introduced laws restricting the use of social media by children younger than 16.
That regulatory action follows a series of social media trials this year, in which thousands of teens, schools and states have accused Meta, Snap, TikTok and YouTube of hooking young users with addictive products compared to cigarettes.
Last month, Meta settled with 47 states, Washington, D.C., and U.S. territories for up to $17.1 billion and agreed to major changes for young users on its platform. Part of the settlement is contingent on other social media companies’ reaching similar agreements with the states.
“We have passed a tipping point — it’s now an avalanche,” a California Assembly member, Josh Lowenthal, a Democrat who introduced the social media bill, said in an interview.
Tech companies have argued that they have already introduced many safety protections for young users. They are also expected to challenge the new California laws in court, saying they violate speech rights.
The swift change in attitude follows years of reluctance by federal and state lawmakers to create child safety regulations. Meta, Google and TikTok deployed some of the nation’s biggest lobbying forces in Washington and in state capitals to defeat child safety bills. The companies argued that regulations would stymie the growth of the tech sector.
“There’s no question the lobbying power neutralized policymakers, but this has been a galvanizing moment where policymakers realize we are at a crisis moment,” said Jeffrey Chester, executive director of Center for Digital Democracy, a nonprofit group that has advocated child safety laws.
California has long led the way in online regulations. In 2022, the state enacted a law that restricted data collection of users younger than 18. Last year, Newsom signed into law requirements for AI companies to test their models for safety and report those results.
And this year, he and other lawmakers have rushed to support protections for children using AI, as stories emerged of chatbots guiding young users to self-harm with dangerous and sexually explicit content.
Still, Newsom has been reticent in some cases. He vetoed a version of the chatbot child safety bill last year.
The 13 bills Newsom signed Thursday include measures to enhance digital privacy protections for youth, expand the legal definition of child sexual exploitation to include digitally altered or AI-generated images and rewrite existing laws on child-safety design to respond to court rulings.
The marquee bills in the package take aim at social media and chatbot use by children.
Assembly Bill 1709 prohibits social media platforms from offering addictive features such as infinite scroll and autoplay videos to users younger than 16. Assembly Bill 2 sets financial penalties for lawsuits against social media companies accused of harming children through their platforms. Senate Bill 1119 creates new regulations for chatbot use, including parental controls, notifications if children disable safety settings and a crisis protocol for queries about suicide.
“It is an extraordinary reflection of how momentum has changed in the world,” said Jim Steyer, CEO of Common Sense Media, a nonprofit child advocacy group. “This is the biggest, most far-reaching set of online protections in the United States and will set a standard for the whole nation.”
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This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
By Cecilia Kang and Laurel Rosenhall/Eric Ryan Anderson
c. 2026 The New York Times Company
