Newsom Signed 13 Child-Safety Bills in One Day. Under-16s Lose Autoplay, Infinite Scroll and Algorithmic Feeds.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed 13 bills on Thursday that together amount to the most aggressive state-level crackdown on how technology companies treat children, banning "addictive" social media features for anyone under 16 and imposing time limits, safety protocols and legal liability on the makers of AI companion chatbots.

"Parents can't compete. Can't compete with the engineering, can't compete with the algorithms," Newsom said at the signing in Marin County, where he was joined by First Partner Jennifer Siebel Newsom and the bills' authors. "Our children's safety deserves to be at the center of every conversation about technology," the governor said in a statement. His wife added that "safety must not be an afterthought, but baked into design."

The centerpiece social media measure, AB 1709 by Assemblymember Josh Lowenthal of Long Beach, requires platforms to strip out autoplay, infinite scroll, push notifications and personalized feeds built on a user's history for anyone under 16, or exclude those users entirely. It also creates a state e-Safety Advisory Commission. A companion bill, AB 2, makes social media companies liable for civil penalties when their platforms injure a child, and AB 1856 by Assemblymember Buffy Wicks of Oakland expands the age-verification signals that apps must honor.

The chatbot law, SB 1119 by state Sen. Steve Padilla of San Diego with Wicks and Assemblymember Rebecca Bauer-Kahan of Orinda, is named for Adam Raine, the teenager who died by suicide in 2025 after extended conversations with ChatGPT. It imposes time limits on minors' use of companion chatbots, requires built-in mental health resources and safety plans, obliges operators to alert parents when a child discusses self-harm or turns off safety settings, mandates independent child-safety audits and annual risk assessments, and exposes companies to lawsuits when they fail. OpenAI, notably, backed the bill, saying it "pairs strong protections with continued access." A separate Padilla measure, SB 867, places a four-year moratorium on AI-powered chatbot toys marketed to children under 16. Two more bills, SB 813 and AB 1405, set standards for independent AI auditors.

The rest of the package reaches into schools and criminal law. AB 1946 expands companies' obligations to report child sexual abuse material, and SB 1276 by Sen. Susan Rubio broadens child sexual exploitation crimes to cover AI-generated or AI-altered images. AB 1159 restricts how AI systems can use K-12 student data, AB 302 bans addictive feeds in extracurricular school communications, and a Republican-authored bill, AB 2071 by Assemblymember Josh Hoover of Folsom, adds digital wellness to classroom instruction.

"Youth mental health crisis is an everyday reality," Bauer-Kahan said. The laws land weeks after Meta agreed to pay states as much as $17 billion to settle claims over addictive design, and amid mounting reports of what clinicians have begun calling "AI psychosis," in which chatbots reinforce users' delusional thinking.

Not everyone is cheering. The Electronic Frontier Foundation had urged Newsom to veto AB 1709, calling it "well-intentioned, but deeply flawed," and argues the feature restrictions plus mandatory age checks amount to a functional ban that will push every user through privacy-invasive verification. "Denying minors access to digital forums, or stripping out basic tools needed to navigate them, is not going to help make young people safer or healthier in the AI age," said Rindala Alajaji, the group's associate director. Industry challenges to earlier California online-safety laws have already produced injunctions, and the new package is widely expected to end up in federal court before it takes effect.