California governor signs law to limit children's social media risks

California Governor Gavin Newsom signed more than a dozen new laws on Thursday that address various aspects of children's safety online, including one that prohibits social media companies from serving addictive features to users under 16 years old.

During a signing ceremony held near San Francisco, Newsom described the state's new social media restrictions for children as "better" than Australia's ban for all users under 16.

"This is different than what Australia did," Newsom said.

"This is about the features themselves. This is about actually addressing the problem, the scrolling, the algorithms. This is about addressing the substantive issue around the engineering. If you address that, then the age issue is not the essential issue," he continued.

Australia's law went into effect in December, and early reports have shown it has been ineffective at preventing children and teenagers from using social media. A report published by Australia's own government in July showed that enforcement has been spotty and many children were still using social media.

While California's new law targets users under 16, it doesn't require a full ban for those users.

Instead, it defines "addictive" features as ones that are "psychologically exploitative" and prohibits social media companies from providing children with features such as infinite scroll, algorithmic recommendations and autoplay.

Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, already agreed to implement a similar approach as part of a settlement with California and dozens of other U.S. states, which sued the social media giant for allegedly violating various state and federal laws related to children's privacy and consumer protections.

The company is committed to providing teens with safe, age-appropriate experiences on Facebook and Instagram, "all with the proper guardrails in place," a Meta spokesperson told AFP in a statement on Thursday.

Snap, TikTok and Google-owned YouTube did not reply to requests for comment.