California↗ has spent years trying to regulate the risks social platforms create for children. The latest package is notable because it stops speaking only in generalities and begins naming the product features lawmakers consider problematic. Governor Gavin Newsom signed 13 measures Thursday aimed at social media, AI chatbots and synthetic content involving minors.
Among the clearest provisions are restrictions preventing platforms from exposing children under 16 to features designed to encourage continuous use, including infinite-scroll feeds and autoplay. That shifts attention from what appears in a feed to the mechanics that keep the user inside it.
The package also reaches rapidly evolving AI products. California is imposing additional parental controls and safety obligations around AI chatbots and has adopted a four-year prohibition on the manufacture and sale of toys with AI companion chatbots.
The laws will almost certainly face legal and technical challenges. The Electronic Frontier Foundation↗ and other digital-rights advocates warn that age-gating systems can create privacy problems and broad restrictions can collide with speech protections.
For software builders, the signal is bigger than California. Regulation is becoming feature-specific. Teams designing social or agentic products should assume that autoplay, recommender loops, persuasive notifications, companion behavior and age-sensitive personalization may eventually need their own controls, audit trails and jurisdiction-specific configurations.
California Governor Gavin Newsom signed a sweeping child-safety technology package that restricts addictive social-media features for users under 16, imposes new chatbot safeguards and temporarily bars AI companion toys.