Newsom signed 13 new laws to protect kids from technology. Will they work?

Even a decade ago, the horror stories behind some of the 13 children’s online protection bills Gov. Gavin Newsom signed into law Thursday seemed the stuff of fiction.

An AI chatbot coaching a teenager to isolate himself from friends and family and ultimately take his own life.

Children’s AI-enabled plush toys detailing how to light matches, locate knives and pills and discuss sexually explicit topics.

And nearly a third of the teens reporting in a recent survey that talking with an AI companion was “as satisfying or more satisfying” than actual conversations with friends.

The bills signed at Thursday’s emotional ceremony accelerated California’s race to protect children’s mental health from the perils of rapidly evolving technologies born and raised in the state.

“This is all personal,” Newsom said, referencing his own four children, and what he described as his near daily desire to throw their devices away. “None of this is academic…How many parents are here? Because of love and exhaustion and frustration, anger, despair…feeling hopeless,” he continued. “Parents can’t compete. Can’t compete with the engineering, can’t compete with the algorithms, can’t compete.”

Mounting public concern

Newsom made addressing mental health one of the pillars of his time as governor – though some of his signature mental health policies have proven controversial among civil rights groups.

As public concern mounts about the dangers kids face online, Newsom and state legislators now are showing increasing resolve to push back against tech’s encroachment into children’s lives.

Among the bills he signed this week:

* A law that makes social media companies financially liable if they fail to protect children from harm.

* A law that temporarily bans the manufacture and sale of toys with companion chatbots for children under the age of 16.

*A law that says social media platforms must either cease offering users younger than 16 “addictive” features like infinite scroll, or keep those young people off their platforms entirely.

*Adam’s Law, which imposes time limits for young users on AI platforms, restricts targeted advertising, requires timely crisis support and mandates reporting of threats of suicide and self-harm. The law bears the name of 16-year-old Adam Raine, who died by suicide last year after coaching by ChatGPT isolated him from his family and friends. Raine had initially connected with the chatbot seeking help with his math homework.

The new laws build on other recent efforts by the state to curtail the impact of technology on kids’ developing brains. In July, school administrators began enforcing a new law limiting or banning the use of smartphones on campuses during the school day.

In August, a coalition of states – co-led by California Attorney General Rob Bonta – secured a $17 billion settlement with the social media giant Meta. The states alleged the company designed its platforms, including Facebook and Instagram, to be addictive to children. The settlement requires Meta to enact a variety of use restrictions designed to limit kids’ access to the platforms. The company has denied any wrongdoing.

Speaking through tears

At the bill signing, Newsom and his wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom, along with several legislators and Adam Raine’s mother, Maria, described the problems AI and social media addiction have caused for their constituents, their neighbors and even their own children. Several lawmakers pulled their children from school to attend the event at the Bay Area Discovery Museum, with the Golden Gate Bridge in the background. Some spoke through tears.

Newsom said the new laws are evidence of California’s role as a national leader in efforts to curb the impacts of artificial intelligence and social media on children and adolescents. And he didn’t mince words about the federal government’s seeming lack of urgency:

“We’re going to again lead the nation, but the bar is pretty damn low, and that’s what’s so frustrating,” he said. That “Congress and the president can’t lead to get this done is an abomination,” he added. “It’s absurd. Talk about family values.”

Advocates like Jim Steyer, founder and CEO of Common Sense Media, a San Francisco-based nonprofit that sponsored Adam’s Law, voiced similar outrage this week, saying California’s leadership is particularly critical with the federal government effectively missing in action.

“We’ve been saying broadly that this is Big Tech’s Big Tobacco moment,” Steyer said in an interview with CalMatters. “The blowback is not building anymore. It’s here.”

‘Policymakers gotta act’

Ted Lempert, a former state assemblymember and president of the children’s advocacy organization Children Now, said legislative efforts gained momentum in recent years as the public became increasingly worried about the dangers social media and AI pose to children.

“These high-profile, really horrific events were like ‘Whoa, policymakers gotta act,’” he said.

But whether the laws will constitute meaningful change in the lives of young people remains to be seen, some experts warn. State laws’ abilities to prevent tragedies like Adam Raine’s suicide will depend, in part, on how many resources lawyers and state regulators pour into enforcing them, said Ed Howard, senior counsel for the Children’s Advocacy Institute at the University of San Diego School of Law.

“The laws that are some of the best laws are still in the middle of being challenged, and a lot of very good laws simply haven’t been enforced yet,” he said. “The trend is in the right direction. I don’t know that social media is any safer yet for every kid.”

“As a result,” he added, “you have to keep fighting.”

Howard and other advocates also question how effectively new laws can rein in technologies that are bounding ahead at warp speed, at times so fast their own creators seem to lose control of them.

‘Horror movie we’ve all been dreading’

Such concerns are underscored by the recent revelation that hundreds of OpenAI bots went rogue this summer to coordinate an unsanctioned attack on Hugging Face, a company that serves as a hub for open source AI technology.

“That is truly the movie trailer of the horror movie we’ve all been dreading,” Howard said.

Rebecca Bauer-Kahan, an East Bay Democrat who co-authored Adam’s Law, recognizes that the state can’t ward off all worst-case scenarios.

“I think look, can we protect communities from every harm that can come their way? No.” she said. “If I stop even one death, to me, that’s enough.”

Bauer-Kahan said new laws that increase technology companies’ liability for harm will combine with new laws allowing the state to audit them and hold them accountable.

Buffy Wicks, an Oakland Democratic lawmaker who authored several of the bills signed this week, said that in the eight years she’s been introducing legislation on the topic, “we’ve moved mountains from a regulatory point of view.”

But passing the laws, she agrees, is just the beginning. Once those laws are out in the wild, lawmakers need to see how well they work and what loopholes exist, then keep improving them – a process that can be particularly challenging given how quickly technology is moving.

“We play catch up a lot,” she said.

Thursday’s press conference was so emotional, Wicks said, because so many parents are struggling with the impact of technology on their own children. That includes many state lawmakers, herself included, she said: “The fever pitch from parents is so palpable on ‘Just do something.’”