NEWS
California Writes a Teen Version of Instagram and TikTok
California’s AB 1709 would strip infinite scroll and autoplay from teens under 16, turning Meta’s child-safety deal into a rule for every rival app.
California lawmakers voted Monday to bar Instagram, TikTok, YouTube and other apps from giving teens under 16 infinite scroll, autoplay and ranked feeds. Gov. Gavin Newsom has until September 30 to sign or veto the bill, AB 1709.
The vote came five days after Attorney General Rob Bonta joined a deal that already forces Meta to cap teen time on Instagram and Facebook. The statute would apply a design rule to every covered platform, not only the company that just paid.
Lawmakers Rewrote an Australia-Style Ban Into a Design Rule
Assemblymember Josh Lowenthal, a Long Beach Democrat, introduced AB 1709 on February 4 as a hard lockout. Kids under 16 would not have been allowed to keep accounts on platforms built around engagement tricks. Australia’s under-16 cutoff was the model, and the first Assembly roll call treated it that way: on May 28 the house passed the bill 76-0.
Senators then pushed back. A full ban, they argued, would also cut teens off from group chats, school news and the few corners of the internet that still feel safe. On June 30, Lowenthal agreed to drop the account ban and keep the features fight. Teens could stay if the product in their hands had no “addictive feature.”
“The bill regulates how the platforms are designed for kids, not whether kids can access social media altogether,” Lowenthal said after the final vote. Republican Assemblymember Josh Hoover of Folsom, a joint author, called it “a parent issue.” Republican Assemblymember Carl DeMaio, a regular critic of Sacramento Democrats, voted yes and said Congress had failed to act.
Jim Steyer, founder of co-sponsor Common Sense Media, framed the night as social media’s Big Tobacco moment.
Parents cannot out-parent an algorithm built in a lab to keep kids scrolling. Today the California Senate said enough. AB 1709 forces these companies to design their platforms for children’s safety, or they cannot offer them to children.
Jim Steyer, founder and CEO, Common Sense Media
The Senate passed the amended bill 39-0 on August 31. The Assembly concurred the same evening and sent the measure to engrossing and enrolling.
HOW THE BILL CHANGED
- February 4, 2026: Lowenthal introduces an under-16 account ban modeled on Australia.
- May 28, 2026: The Assembly passes that version 76-0 and sends it to the Senate.
- June 30, 2026: The author agrees to let teens keep accounts if addictive features are stripped out.
- August 26, 2026: Bonta and a 51-attorney-general coalition announce the Meta child-safety deal.
- August 31, 2026: The Senate votes 39-0, the Assembly concurs, and the bill lands on Newsom’s desk.
- September 30, 2026: Last day for the governor to sign or veto session bills.
That rewrite is why the press language still sounds like a ban while the legal text reads like a product spec. The open fight is no longer “can a 15-year-old have TikTok.” It is what TikTok is allowed to be once she does.
What AB 1709 Bans for Users Under 16
The enrolled text would bar covered platforms from providing addictive features to users under 16 who live in California. Accounts are still legal. The ranked For You page is not, if that ranking uses information tied to the user or the user’s device. Autoplay is named on its own. A third bucket lets the attorney general add features later by regulation.
A clip a teen explicitly taps still can play. A private message still can arrive. The next song in an album a user already opened still can queue, so long as it does not start itself. What the bill is aiming at is the machine that watches what you watched and then keeps serving more of it, with no bottom to the page.
That is also the soft spot. Almost every large app now ranks posts with some mix of follows, watch time and taps. If “addictive feed” swallows all of that, a chronological following list is about the only product left, and a 15-year-old will treat that list as a broken app. The live objection on the night of the vote was the same one defense lawyers will file: which part of social media, exactly, is the addictive part.
Covered platforms are sites and apps that offer an addictive feature as a significant part of the service. Storefronts limited to sales or product reviews, and feeds whose main job is cloud storage, are carved out. Before a platform may offer an addictive feature at all, it must verify age under the Digital Age Assurance Act, which starts January 1, 2027 and pulls age-bracket data from the operating system or the app store. If the company cannot verify age that way, it has to fall back on a separate state age determination already on the books.
Only the attorney general or a local prosecutor can sue. There is no private right of action. A knowing violation can cost up to $50,000 per affected minor; a negligent one up to $25,000. A court has to weigh the company’s size, how long the breach lasted, how bad it was, and whether the company tried in good faith to comply. The attorney general can also widen “covered platform” by rule if a new app starts shipping the same hooks. An e-Safety Advisory Commission, housed in the Department of Justice, would report each January to the governor and the Legislature.
If Newsom signs, the Electronic Frontier Foundation says the law would take effect in January 2027, the same month the age-signal law starts. That is the ordinary California calendar for a non-urgency bill signed this session.
Meta Already Agreed to Time Caps Last Week
On August 26, five days before the floor votes, Bonta announced a proposed settlement with Meta that still needs a federal consent judgment. The money is up to $17 billion over ten years. California’s share is $1.5 billion to $2.1 billion, earmarked in the papers for preventing or repairing youth harms tied to social media. Trial in the Northern District of California had opened on August 18.
“We are talking about time limits, stopping notifications during school, a block on the app during critical overnight hours, bans on plastic surgery filters, and so much more,” Bonta said. The deal is limited to Instagram and Facebook. It does not rewrite YouTube, TikTok or Snapchat.
WHAT META ALREADY PROMISED
- Daily cap: A default two-hour limit for users under 18 that only a parent can lift, dropping to one hour if other platforms take similar terms.
- Night block: Access off from midnight to 6 a.m. unless a parent overrides, expanding to 10 p.m. to 7 a.m. if rivals match.
- School quiet: Notifications off from 10 p.m. to 7 a.m. and from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. on school days from August 15 to June 15.
- Scroll breaks: Mandatory pauses after 15 minutes of continuous use, then again at 60 and 90 minutes, on a combined Instagram and Facebook clock.
- Social comparison: No like or reaction counts and no cosmetic-procedure filters for users under 18.
- Feed choice: An option for a non-personalized feed that does not target teens with content meant to keep them scrolling.
- Reports: Meta must answer 90 percent of teen reports of harmful content within six hours, under an independent auditor.
Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes said those time caps last five years at two hours, then can drop to 60 minutes and run ten years if Snapchat, TikTok and YouTube take comparable terms. She told those companies to “immediately follow Meta’s lead.” The settlement also gives teens a non-personalized feed as an option. AB 1709 would make the stripped feed the default for anyone under 16 in California, and it would not be limited to Meta.
YouTube and TikTok Remain Outside Meta’s Deal
The money in the Meta papers is not a flat check. State attorneys general described a guaranteed payment that rises only if Snapchat, TikTok and YouTube accept similar teen limits. Meta, for its part, has already begun telling those three to get in line, because a two-hour Instagram cap is a gift to whatever app still autoplays after dinner.
YouTube’s product is autoplay. TikTok’s product is an endless ranked feed. Snapchat’s product is a streak that punishes anyone who puts the phone down. None of those companies signed the August 26 papers. AB 1709 is the California statute that would reach them anyway, if the governor signs and if the definition of “addictive feature” survives a courtroom.
SETTLEMENT TERMS VERSUS THE BILL
| Rule | Meta settlement | AB 1709 |
|---|---|---|
| Who it binds | Instagram and Facebook | Any covered platform with an addictive feature |
| Age cutoff | Under 18 | Under 16 |
| Ranked feed | Optional non-personalized feed | Banned as an addictive feature |
| Autoplay | Not listed as banned | Banned by name |
| Daily time cap | Two hours default, one hour if rivals match | Not in the bill |
| Night and school blocks | Yes, with a parent override | Not in the bill |
| Money | Up to $17 billion over ten years | Up to $50,000 per minor, knowing |
Read side by side, the bill is narrower on hours and harsher on design. Meta already has to build clocks, night mode and a chronological option. YouTube would have to stop the next video from starting itself for a 15-year-old in California. TikTok would have to stop ranking. That is a different cost, and it is why the holdouts matter more than the company that already settled.
Newsom Called the Author His Legislator of the Year
The governor’s office declined a formal comment on the passage. On the Capitol steps the same day, asked about the social media bill, Newsom made his lean obvious.
My legislator of the year is Josh Lowenthal for the work he’s done on that. We must continue to lead in this area.
Gov. Gavin Newsom, California Capitol, August 31, 2026
Lowenthal called it one of the best days of his life. Assemblymember David Alvarez, a San Diego Democrat and a primary author, said it was “a very big step for California and I think for the rest of the country.” Newsom has said before that he supports tighter rules for teens under 16, and he asked lawmakers for stronger youth guardrails in his final State of the State address. Last year he signed a separate bill requiring mental-health warning labels for users under 18, starting in January 2027. He also vetoed a bill that would have made platforms liable for amplifying hate, calling that one premature.
He has not said the word “sign.” He has until September 30.
WHAT WE KNOW
- The vote: The Senate passed AB 1709 39-0 on August 31, and the Assembly concurred after passing an earlier version 76-0 on May 28.
- The desk: The bill is with Newsom, who must act by September 30.
- The Meta deal: A proposed settlement announced August 26 would pay states up to $17 billion over ten years and cap teen time on Instagram and Facebook.
WHAT IS UNCONFIRMED
- The signature: Newsom has praised the author and has not issued a sign-or-veto statement.
- The rivals: Snapchat, TikTok and YouTube have not adopted the Meta time caps, so the highest settlement payment has not been triggered.
- The lawsuit: No complaint has been filed against AB 1709, though NetChoice is already in court over California’s earlier kids-online laws.
On August 31 the Electronic Frontier Foundation sent Newsom a veto request. As of Wednesday, that letter is the main public ask on his desk from the other side.
Account Bans Keep Losing in Court
Rindala Alajaji of the Electronic Frontier Foundation wrote that AB 1709 still “functions as a sweeping ban” because the feed definition is wide enough to cover “virtually every functional recommendation algorithm,” including basic signals such as who a user follows. She called the bill “a massive privacy and free speech nightmare,” and she warned that age checks will push platforms toward government IDs or face scans, which then sit as breach targets for users of every age.
The group also says the bill collides with two statutes California already passed: the Digital Age Assurance Act (AB 1043) and the Protecting Our Kids from Social Media Addiction Act (SB 976). SB 976 already limits addictive feeds for minors unless a platform lacks actual knowledge that the user is a minor or has verifiable parental consent. NetChoice, the trade group that includes Google and Meta, has been in federal court for years over that law and over the Age-Appropriate Design Code. AB 1709 goes further. It does not offer a parental-consent off-ramp for the under-16 feed ban.
France is the cautionary case for the version Lowenthal abandoned. In August the country’s top court struck down an under-15 social media ban that had been set to start in January 2027, a result the Electronic Frontier Foundation cited in its veto letter. Hard lockouts keep arriving in legislatures and then stalling in court. A design rule is Sacramento’s attempt to stay on the product and off the First Amendment tripwire that treats “no account” as “no speech.”
That bet is untested. A ranked feed is how these companies choose what speech to show, and the Supreme Court has already treated that choice as their speech in other cases. If a judge accepts that frame, AB 1709 is a speech law with a child-safety label. If a judge treats infinite scroll and autoplay as product design, like a slot-machine button, the state has a clearer path. The definition in the bill, not the floor speech about parents, is what that case will turn on.
A California Feed Would Not Stay in California
Platforms can, in theory, ship a California-only teen mode and leave the rest of the country on autoplay. They already geo-fence ads, tax receipts and privacy pop-ups. A second ranking stack is still a second ranking stack. It has to be tested, staffed, age-gated and explained to advertisers who buy attention by the hour. For a company that already has to pull age-bracket data from Apple and Google on January 1, 2027, the low-cost move is one teen product, not 50.
That is the part of AB 1709 the wire copy underplays. Meta has already agreed, in a deal with 51 attorneys general, to put clocks and night blocks on Instagram and Facebook and to offer a feed that does not chase watch time. California’s bill would take the stripped feed off the options menu for anyone under 16 and hand the same duty to every rival that still runs autoplay. If Newsom signs, the feature ban and the state’s new age-signal law would land in the same January. Product teams would then have to decide whether a 15-year-old in Ohio still gets the clip that starts itself.
