California Signs Landmark Online Child Safety Package

The Bottom Line

• California has signed into law the nation’s most far-reaching package of online child safety legislation, including a ban on addictive social media features for users under 16, the strongest companion chatbot regulations for children, and enhanced civil penalties for platforms that harm children.
• Companies that operate social media platforms or make companion chatbots available to children in California should promptly assess whether their products fall within the scope of these laws, evaluate their age-verification practices, audit their platform features and chatbot functionalities, and prepare compliance programs ahead of the laws’ effective dates.

On September 10, 2026, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed a broad package of digital safety laws establishing some of the most extensive online protections for minors in the United States.

Three bills in the California package are particularly significant for advertising, marketing, and media companies.

Banning Addictive Social Media Features for Users Under 16

Assembly Bill 1709 prohibits social media platforms from providing addictive features to users under the age of 16, similar to the New York SAFE for Kids Act enacted in 2024. The bill targets “psychologically exploitative features intended to maximize engagement that foreseeably lead to compulsive use” among children under 16.

Specifically prohibited features include infinite scrolling, autoplay, and algorithmically personalized feeds based on user history and profile. The California Attorney General is authorized to define additional addictive features through regulations, meaning the list of prohibited features may expand over time.

Notably, AB 1709 does not ban accounts for users under 16. Rather, platforms must ensure those accounts do not include addictive features. As a practical matter, platforms will need to implement age verification before providing addictive features, which raises its own compliance and privacy considerations.

AB 1709 carries civil penalties of up to $50,000 per minor for knowing violations and up to $25,000 for negligent violations, enforceable by the California Attorney General or a local public prosecutor. There is no private right of action.

The Nation’s Strongest Companion Chatbot Regulations for Children

Senate Bill 1119, known as “Adam’s Law,” builds on California’s 2025 companion chatbot law (SB 243) and creates the nation’s most comprehensive regulatory framework for AI companion chatbots interacting with children. The law significantly expands the obligations of chatbot operators and introduces both public enforcement mechanisms and a private right of action.

The law applies to “operators” defined as any person who makes a companion chatbot available to a user in California. A “companion chatbot” is defined as an AI system that provides adaptive, human-like responses, can meet a user’s social needs, exhibits anthropomorphic features, and can sustain a relationship across multiple interactions.

The law excludes chatbots providing customer service, bots embedded in video games that cannot discuss mental health, self-harm, or sexually explicit content, and higher education institutions making chatbots available exclusively in educational settings, among others.

Before making a new or substantially modified companion chatbot available in California, operators must perform a comprehensive risk assessment evaluating each “covered harm” broadly defined to include physical, financial, psychological, or emotional harm; privacy intrusions; and adverse discrimination. Operators must also publish a child safety policy and document mitigation measures.

If an operator permits children to access a companion chatbot, the law imposes three categories of operational requirements:

• Crisis response protocols. Operators must maintain a documented protocol to mitigate the risk of generating content that promotes suicidal ideation, suicide or self-harm.
• Default parental controls. The law requires default settings that can be changed only by a parent.
• Prohibited chatbot behaviors. Operators must take reasonable measures to prevent the chatbot from engaging in a broad range of harmful conduct with child users.

Restrictions on Data and Advertising

Operators may not display cross-context behavioral advertising to child users, target advertising using personal information from the child’s conversations, sell the personal information of a child user gathered through the chatbot, or use dark patterns in interface designs related to child safety features.

Age-appropriate contextual advertising based on the child’s age, general geolocation, device information, and expressed interests during a session is permitted.

Audit Requirements and Enforcement

By January 1, 2029, operators must submit to an independent third-party child safety audit, repeated every two years thereafter, with audit summaries submitted to the Attorney General and published on the operator’s website. Operators with less than $500 million in gross annual revenue are exempt from audit requirements until January 1, 2032.

• Public enforcement: A public prosecutor may bring a civil action for up to $5,000 per affected child per negligent violation and up to $15,000 per affected child per intentional violation.
• Private right of action: A child who suffers actual harm, or a parent on the child’s behalf, may sue for actual damages, reasonable attorney’s fees and costs, injunctive relief, and any other relief the court deems appropriate.

The substantive requirements become operative on July 1, 2027.

Increased Civil Penalties for Platforms That Harm Children

Assembly Bill 2 significantly raises the financial stakes for social media companies in child harm litigation, leveraging existing negligence laws to apply civil penalties that range from $5,000 to $1 million per child or three times the actual damages, whichever is greater.

Given the volume of pending child harm litigation against major platforms, Assembly Bill 2 meaningfully increases potential exposure for companies whose products are used by minors in California.

Other Notable Bills in the Package

The broader package also includes SB 867 (a four-year ban on toys incorporating companion chatbots), AB 1856 (age verification signal requirements for software applications), AB 2246 (requiring online services regularly used by children to prevent access to harmful content), and SB 1276 (expanding the definition of child sexual exploitation to include digitally altered or AI-generated images).

The US and International Landscape

The California legislation arrives amid a rapidly shifting regulatory landscape. In the United States, more than two dozen child safety social media and AI bills have passed in state legislatures this year. The California package also follows a wave of litigation against major platforms, including Meta’s settlement of up to $17.1 billion with 47 states over claims that its platforms are addictive and harmful to children.

Internationally, France, Britain, Indonesia, and Greece have adopted or enacted laws restricting social media use by children.

In the European Union, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen recently announced a proposed EU Kids Act that would ban social media for children under 13 across the European Union, permit only parent-supervised “mini accounts” with limited features for users aged 13 to 15, and impose strict age-verification and safe-by-design obligations on social media platforms, video-sharing services, and AI companion chatbots, with potential fines of up to 6% of annual global revenue for noncompliance.