What does California’s AB 1709 do?
AB 1709 is a landmark bill that will ban addictive features and feeds for under-16-year-olds on social media platforms. AB 1709 targets the core concerns that young people and parents have across the country: the addictive design features of social media platforms that, at the cost of our well-being, maximize users’ time spent online for profit.
Our strategy for AB 1709:
Introduced as a blanket social media ban, AB 1709 initially passed in the California Assembly unanimously as a similar proposal to Australia’s social media ban for under-16-year-olds. We shared the concern with California lawmakers about protecting young people online, but we had enforcement, access, and constitutional concerns about the bill as written. Over the course of the session, we developed a different approach — one that preserved the core framework of AB 1709 while making amendments to better align with a version that addressed our concerns.
After meeting with the bill sponsor and others, we worked with our partners to send letters to the Senate Privacy, Judiciary, and Appropriations Committees urging changes and advocating for a targeted ban on addictive features and feeds. Our advocacy was successful, and at the end of July 2026, the bill was successfully amended. Our members attended a lobby day alongside partners to advocate for the passage of the bill once it was amended.
What have others said?
“This is different than what Australia did. This is better than what they did. They are working around that; these kids are all figuring out a way to game that system. And you see that in the data in Australia; you see that in the other countries that have done age gating. This is about the features themselves. This is about actually addressing the problem. The scrolling, the algorithms. This is addressing the substantive issues around the engineering. If you address that, then the age issue is not the essential issue. And that’s what makes this truly a significant and consequential bill and something we are proud to claim is national leading in terms of addressing social media harms for kids 16 and under.” – Governor Gavin Newsom, California
A way forward for the future:
AB 1709 offers an alternative to social media bans that focus on the core harm we are all concerned about — the business model — that companies themselves engineer to hook younger users with addictive feeds and features. California’s approach also incentivizes companies to create safe defaults for all users, not just children, and to use age-assurance only to opt into these features for those over the age of 16. These principles build on the work we have done for years to pass Age-Appropriate Design Codes across states that restrict addictive features on social media.
As politicians look to rally behind proposals ahead of a key election year, we hope this offers them a path forward. The good news is that lawmakers can go even further than California’s AB 1709 approach. States can pursue an Age-Appropriate Design Code (AADC) framework that bans addictive feeds and features and doesn’t just confine addictive features to the Attorney General’s discretion. It requires risk assessments, a reasonable-alternative-design requirement, and annual audits to make platforms evaluate new features before deployment. Private rights of action under the AADC allow for enforcement beyond just the Attorney General. And age assurance is only required to opt in to addictive features.
States have already passed versions of the AADC in California, Illinois, Nebraska, New Jersey, South Carolina, and Vermont.