Governor Newsom signs the strongest child safety chatbot and social media laws in the nation

The ongoing topic of children and social media has largely focused on what parents should be doing. Parents obviously have an important role in helping their children navigate the internet. Parents can only do so much about social media when they aren't the ones designing the environment their children inevitably have to use. California is starting to take a different approach. California Governor Gavin Newsom recently signed legislation, AB 1709, to limit social media features for users under 16. The law puts some responsibility directly on the companies that design and operate these platforms. That represents an important shift in how we think about online safety.

It's Not Just About How Long Kids Are Online

Many people focus on screen time when it comes to social media use. If a teenager spends six hours a day on social media, it's easy to conclude that they spend too much time on it. The time someone spends online doesn't tell us everything about their experience, what they see, how they find it, and why they continue engaging. The platform decides the content they see. Social media platforms aren't websites where people choose what they want to look at like the old experience millennials grew up with.

They are personalized content feeds designed to keep users engaged. Infinite scrolling is a good example. You don't reach the bottom of the page. You keep scrolling, and another post appears. The same thing happens with autoplay. A video finishes, and another one starts before you make an active decision to watch it. These features may seem harmless individually, but together they can make it incredibly easy to keep consuming content without ever consciously deciding to continue.

Responsibility 

Parents can tell their child to stop scrolling, set a screen-time limit, and take devices away, but parents can't redesign social media platforms or change how an algorithm recommends content. Those design decisions are made by the companies that build these platforms. California's approach recognizes that platforms have control over the environment they create. Parents make the rules at home, but they can't control every part of the product their children are using.

This Is Bigger Than One California Law

California's new legislation also comes at a time that follows a broader shift in how social media companies are being treated. Meta recently agreed to an $18 billion settlement with dozens of U.S. states over allegations involving the safety of children and teenagers on its platforms. Meta agreed to make the experience teenagers have on Instagram and Facebook safer. California's new laws go beyond social media feeds. Large social media companies could face penalties of up to $1 million per child if they are found negligent with child safety on their platforms. The laws also restrict addictive feeds for users under 16, require companies developing AI chatbots to assess potential risks before releasing them, and give families the option to opt out of school-provided laptops.

One of the most important new laws is Adam's Law, which focuses on AI companion chatbots and is named after 16-year-old Adam Raine, who died by suicide after extensive conversations with ChatGPT surrounding personal issues. His family argued that the chatbot became a close companion to Adam and reinforced harmful thoughts rather than providing appropriate safeguards or beneficial solutions to his situation. 

The law puts more responsibility on the companies building AI technology. AI chatbot operators will be required to conduct risk assessments before releasing new or significantly updated chatbots, provide crisis support, and use safety settings that parents can control. The law also addresses harmful outputs involving self-harm, sexually explicit material, emotional manipulation, and other behavior that could encourage a child to become overly dependent on a chatbot. AI can be beneficial for learning, creativity, and exploring ideas. As these systems become more conversational and personal, the responsibility for making those interactions safe can't fall entirely on parents who may not even know what is happening inside the conversation.

Finding the Right Balance

Regulation involving children and technology isn't automatically a good idea. It comes down to how companies will determine age verification, how much personal information is collected to verify that someone is under 16, and general privacy concerns. There's also a fundamental risk. For example, what if a feature designed to reduce harmful engagement also removes something teenagers legitimately use to communicate, find communities, or express themselves? These platforms aren't only designed to keep people scrolling. They can also give young people opportunities to be creative, connect with others, and find communities they may not have access to in their everyday lives. 

That's the original experience we parents had on the early internet, building the literal foundations of social media we have today. We created communities, customized websites, and figured out how this new technology worked. Those similar experiences can be valuable to our kids' social and personal development, so finding the balance between protecting teenagers and restricting the positive ways they use these platforms is as important as their safety. Platforms may also find new ways to encourage engagement. Removing infinite scrolling doesn't necessarily eliminate every design choice that keeps people using an app.

We're Moving Beyond Parental Controls

These new laws don't mean parents no longer have responsibility. They still need to talk to their children about what they encounter online, establish boundaries, and pay attention to how technology affects their children's lives. Millennial parents are the most equipped and experienced to teach proper digital literacy to future generations. We are the generation that learned the internet before the generations that came before us and the ones that came after us.  Parents shouldn't be expected to solve a problem they don't fully control. The standard response to concerns about children and social media has been to give parents more tools.

California's new law doesn't solve the problem of children and social media. Meta's settlement doesn't solve it either.   Parents can teach their children how to navigate the internet. They shouldn't also have to redesign the internet to make it safer. If technology companies can spend years engineering products to keep people scrolling, it seems reasonable to expect them to put some of that same effort into making sure younger users aren't being pushed to keep scrolling when they should stop.

Safety Starts at Home, Too

The responsibility for a safer digital environment doesn't stop with social media platforms. It also starts with the network children connect to at home. Tools like the JEXtream FX20, with its built-in DNS Firewall, can add another layer of protection by helping block malicious and unwanted domains before they reach connected devices. No single tool can solve every online safety issue, but building protection into the network itself is another step toward making safety part of the default experience.