Overview
- Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the package on Thursday, creating a first‑in‑the‑nation set of laws aimed at protecting children from social media design and AI chatbot harms.
- Assembly Bill 1709 bars platforms from offering features labeled “psychologically exploitative” to users under 16, naming examples such as infinite scroll, autoplay and personalized recommendation feeds and requiring age verification before those features are enabled.
- Senate Bill 1119, known as Adam’s Law, forces chatbot operators to verify ages, add in‑app crisis resources, notify parents in specified self‑harm cases, perform risk assessments for new designs and submit independent safety audits.
- A separate law raises civil exposure for companies that harm children, authorizes fines that can reach roughly $1 million per harmed child in some cases, and imposes a four‑year moratorium on companion‑chatbot toys.
- Privacy and free‑speech groups warn the rules may push platforms to collect sensitive identity data and face legal challenges, so regulators’ forthcoming rules on age verification, feature definitions and auditor standards will shape how the laws work in practice.