California Makes Child Safety a Product Requirement

California has made a consequential choice about online safety: it is regulating the design of products, not merely asking families to manage the consequences. Governor Gavin Newsom said Thursday that he had signed a package of laws covering companion chatbots, social-media features, child privacy and digitally altered abuse material.

The package includes what the governor's office calls the nation's strongest companion-chatbot rules. Adam's Law requires crisis protocols for children expressing suicidal ideation, parental controls, notifications if a child disables safety settings, independent child-safety audits and annual risk assessments. A separate measure bars platforms from offering users under 16 addictive features such as autoplay and algorithmic feeds based on a user's history and profile.

California should pair the new duties with transparent enforcement and interoperable safety standards.

From the analysis

The legislation also treats the next layer of risk as a design problem. It expands child-exploitation protections to digitally altered or AI-generated material, restricts targeted advertising to children and adds requirements around the use of K-12 pupil data in AI systems. Reuters independently reported the enactment as a new set of curbs on social media for children, while CNBC likewise reported the signing and its restrictions on addictive features.

That is a better starting point than pretending a terms-of-service page can neutralise an engagement system optimised to keep a vulnerable user scrolling. But rules should be judged by what they make measurable. Independent audits need published methods and meaningful access to evidence; age signals need to minimise the collection and retention of identity data; and families need a clear route to challenge an incorrect restriction.

California should pair the new duties with transparent enforcement and interoperable safety standards. The aim is not to freeze innovation or give officials a veto over every product decision. It is to make companies compete on whether their systems are safe by design, while preserving children's privacy and giving parents and young people a remedy when a platform gets the balance wrong.

Sources

1. Governor of California, Governor Newsom signs the strongest child safety chatbot and social media laws in the nation, September 10, 2026
2. Reuters, California enacts new curbs on social media for children, September 11, 2026
3. CNBC, California enacts new curbs on social media for children, September 11, 2026

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