California has decided that if Silicon Valley invented a digital feature capable of irritating parents, confusing teenagers or generating a congressional hearing, Sacramento should probably have a statute for it. Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a package of new laws Thursday targeting social media, AI chatbots and children’s online experiences. The measures include restrictions on infinite scroll and autoplay for younger users, parental controls, risk assessments, safety protocols and stronger liability rules. The state has reached the point where the childhood settings menu may require counsel.
There is a serious reason for the legislation. Parents and researchers have raised growing concerns about addictive design, AI companion products and the way platforms handle minors. The laws include some narrowly defensible protections, particularly around chatbot safety and exploitative content. Nobody needs to defend an app deliberately optimizing a child’s attention at 2 a.m. The problem is that California’s governing reflex is to see a complicated technology ecosystem and respond by assembling enough mandates to make the ecosystem itself ask for a flowchart.
The Guardian reports that one law bans features such as infinite scroll and autoplay for users under 16. Other measures require developers of AI chatbots to conduct risk assessments and provide parental controls and crisis protocols. Families also gain additional rights over school-issued devices. Newsom called the package nation-leading. California politicians enjoy that phrase because it allows the state to treat being first as evidence that the destination has been checked.
Breitbart and the Washington Examiner separately reported on another part of the week’s California AI push, backed by OpenAI and Anthropic, that creates standards and credentialing rules for independent AI safety auditors. This is where the ideology becomes more interesting than the partisan labels. The companies building powerful AI systems are asking for regulation, California is eager to regulate them, and everybody agrees federal rules would be cleaner. The result is a state-level compliance architecture designed partly by the firms that will learn fastest how to comply with it.
Progressives often describe regulation as a counterweight to corporate power. Sometimes it is. Sometimes it becomes a moat. Large technology companies can hire legal teams, safety departments, auditors and compliance engineers. Smaller companies can discover that innovation now begins with a call to outside counsel. A rule intended to discipline Big Tech can accidentally become one more thing Big Tech is uniquely equipped to absorb. The government builds the obstacle course and the largest firms arrive with sponsored shoes.
The child-safety provisions deserve especially careful treatment because real harms are involved. The target here is not protecting kids. It is the confidence that lawmakers can convert fast-moving product design into stable statutory categories without creating new problems. Infinite scroll sounds easy to ban until every feed has to decide what counts as continuous delivery. AI companion rules sound straightforward until a general-purpose assistant becomes emotionally conversational. Technology evolves by changing nouns faster than legislatures can print them.
Digital-rights groups have also warned that age-based restrictions can create privacy and speech problems. To know who is under 16, platforms may need stronger age-assurance systems. Stronger age assurance can mean collecting more information about users. The child-protection machine therefore risks producing a new adult-verification machine. Government has a recurring talent for solving one privacy concern by asking everyone to upload another document.
Newsom’s political incentive is obvious too. California is home to the AI industry and he is building a national profile. He gets to present himself as the governor who understands technology well enough to regulate it without killing it. That may be true. It is also an unusually convenient presidential résumé line. The laws can be described as protecting children, disciplining platforms and proving executive competence at the same time. Sacramento rarely wastes a bill when it can also be a brochure.
The strongest version of California’s case is that Washington has failed to act and states cannot wait. There is truth there. Congress has spent years holding hearings where executives apologize and senators discover that apps contain algorithms. In the absence of federal law, states are filling the vacuum. But a patchwork of state rules is not automatically wise merely because Congress is slow. Fifty separate experiments can produce fifty lessons or one nationwide legal migraine.
California may prove that these rules meaningfully reduce harmful design while preserving useful technology. If so, other states will copy them and the federal government may eventually follow. But the state should resist treating volume as rigor. A stack of laws is not the same thing as a coherent digital policy. Sometimes leadership means acting first. Sometimes it means knowing which feature actually needs a law before the signing ceremony begins. The real test will arrive later, after the headlines and signing photos, when companies change products, families try to use the controls and courts decide which provisions survive. California has earned influence because other states copy it. That makes restraint more important, not less. A national model built from good rules can help. A national model built from every available rule can become a compliance maze with a state seal. Progressive governance works best when it can explain not only why action is necessary, but why this exact action is the necessary one. Otherwise the regulatory instinct becomes self-justifying: a problem exists, Sacramento has jurisdiction, therefore a bill must exist too. That is activity. It is not automatically sound public judgment. Ever.
If California keeps regulating every new digital feature one bill at a time, when does child safety become a coherent policy instead of a legislative subscription service?
Sources
The Guardian: Gavin Newsom imposes strict new rules on AI, social media and chatbots for children
Breitbart: Gavin Newsom Signs California AI Safety Bills Backed by OpenAI, Anthropic
Washington Examiner: OpenAI backs slew of California AI bills while calling for national regulation
