California bans infinite scroll for under-16s in 13-bill package

Assembly Bill 1709 bars social media platforms from offering addictive features, including infinite scroll and autoplay video, to users under 16.

Senate Bill 1119 sets rules for chatbots: parental controls, notifications when a child switches off safety settings, and a crisis protocol for queries about suicide. A separate law requires AI companies to tell young users when they are talking to a machine rather than a person, and to restrict content on topics such as self-harm.

Both sit inside a package of 13 digital safety bills signed by the governor.

Assembly Bill 2 attaches financial penalties to civil lawsuits brought against social media companies accused of harming children. The remaining bills cover privacy protections for young people, an expanded legal definition of child sexual exploitation that takes in digitally altered and AI-generated images, and a rewrite of existing child-safety design law to answer court rulings.

Newsom said parents alone could not protect their children from powerful algorithms.

Steve Padilla, the state senator who wrote the chatbot bill, spoke at the signing ceremony to Maria Raine, whose son Adam died in 2025 after discussing suicidal thoughts with a chatbot. She attended holding a photograph of him.

The laws follow a year of trials in which thousands of teenagers, schools and states accused Meta, Snap, TikTok and YouTube of hooking young users on addictive products. In August, Meta settled with 47 states, Washington DC and US territories for up to $17.1bn and agreed to substantial changes for young users. Part of that settlement depends on other platforms reaching similar deals.

Tech companies say they have already built safety protections for young users. They are expected to challenge the new laws in court on free speech grounds.

Jeffrey Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy, said lobbying had neutralised policymakers but that this was a galvanising moment. Jim Steyer, chief executive of Common Sense Media, called the package the biggest set of online protections in the United States.

California is not alone. France, Indonesia and Greece have passed laws restricting social media use by under-16s. Britain announced in June that social media would be banned for under-16s across Snapchat, TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook and X, with protections expected in force in spring 2027 and AI "romantic companion" chatbots required to enforce a minimum age of 18. Industry figures have called the UK plan impractical.

For a founder building a consumer app or a chatbot, the engineering consequence is specific. Age assurance stops being a nice-to-have, because the feature set now has to differ by age band: no endless feed, no autoplay for the under-16 cohort.

For anyone shipping conversational AI, the build list is a disclosure notice, parental controls, an alert when safety settings are turned off, and a documented crisis route for suicide-related queries.

Newsom vetoed a version of the chatbot child safety bill in 2025. He signed this one in his final months as governor, and the tech industry's answer is likely to be filed in court rather than in product.