Newsom Signs Bill That Adds Protections for Children on Social Media

The California legislation comes amid growing concerns about the impact of cellphones and social media on adolescents’ mental health.

Gov. Gavin Newsom of California signed legislation on Friday aimed at protecting minors from social media addiction amid growing concerns about the impact of technology on adolescents’ mental health.

The law, which will go into effect in 2027, effectively requires tech companies to make posts on feeds of minors’ social media accounts appear in chronological order as a default, rather than allowing algorithms to curate them to maximize engagement.

The bill also prohibits companies from sending notifications to people under 18 during school hours, from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. on weekdays from September through May, and during sleep hours, between midnight and 6 a.m. The default settings can be changed with the consent of a parent or guardian.

“Every parent knows the harm social media addiction can inflict on their children — isolation from human contact, stress and anxiety, and endless hours wasted late into the night,” Mr. Newsom, who has four school-age children, said in a statement on Friday.

The move, targeting powerful tech interests in the nation’s most populous state, iis part of a nationwide effort to address concern over cellphone and social media use among adolescents. Amid reports of cyberbullying and distraction in classrooms, at least eight states, including Florida and Indiana, have already enacted restrictions on the use of cellphones in school settings. New York put in place a similar law aimed at social media addiction this year.

In June, Governor Newsom also called for a ban on smartphone use in all public schools in California. Legislation now before him includes a requirement that the schools devise a policy by July 1, 2026, to limit or prohibit smartphones during the school day, though most school districts already have cellphone policies.

Platforms like Facebook, X and TikTok rely on a complex set of algorithms to help create highly personalized feeds to keep users engaged for as long as possible. The surgeon general, Dr. Vivek Murthy, has called for social media platforms to carry warning labels like those on cigarettes and other addictive consumer products.

Last year, nearly three dozen states sued Meta, the parent company of Instagram and Facebook, alleging that the company knowingly sought to hook children on its platforms, even as it claimed its social media sites were safe for minors.

Efforts to regulate cellphone use have met with powerful pushback, from parents who argue that cellphones are important for children to have in an age of frequent school shootings; from educators who regard smartphones as a critical tool for learning; and from the tech industry.

A sweeping, first-in-the-nation children’s privacy law passed two years ago in California, but it has been stalled since last year, as a result of court challenges by a tech industry group whose members include TikTok and Meta.

Tech companies have also sought to head off outside regulation by voluntarily imposing their own safeguards for children. This month, Instagram announced sweeping changes that include defaulting its settings to private mode for accounts set up by minors and requiring new followers to obtain approval from account holders before they can see, like or comment on their posts.

The author of the California legislation signed on Friday was State Senator Nancy Skinner, a Democrat from Berkeley, and its sponsors included the Association of California School Administrators, Public Health Advocates and California’s attorney general, Rob Bonta.

Tech industry groups fiercely opposed the bill, calling it “constitutionally flawed” and warning Mr. Newsom in July that if he signed it into law, litigation would follow. They argued that personalized recommendations, in contrast with chronological feeds, benefit younger users by connecting them with more age-appropriate content.

A.C.L.U. California Action also asserted that the bill could create new privacy concerns by forcing social media companies to collect more personal information from users to determine their age and parental relationships.

Other opponents of the bill included L.G.B.T.Q. youth advocates like the nonprofit Trevor Project, which raised concerns that requiring parental consent would restrict young people’s ability to seek identity-affirming communities and resources online.

“Young L.G.B.T.Q.+ Californians who are just coming to understand their identities may be cut off from affirming online communities and resources if S.B. 976 passes,” some of the opposing groups wrote in a joint letter to Speaker Robert Rivas of the California Assembly in June, before the bill passed in the Legislature.

In response to such concerns, Ms. Skinner and other supporters of the bill had argued that the law did nothing to impede L.G.B.T.Q. minors from searching for such communities. And in a statement on Friday, Ms. Skinner predicted the bill would create a safer online environment for all children.

“Social media companies will no longer have the right to addict our kids to their platforms, sending them harmful and sensational content that our kids don’t want and haven’t searched for,” she said.

A Parent’s Guide to Kids and Social Media

• Does your child have an unhealthy relationship with social media? This is what problematic use could look like.
• We asked experts for one practical strategy that parents can use with their kids to help mitigate the harms of social media. Here’s what they told us.
• If you’ve already given your teen full access to social media, these three strategies can help them cut back.
• Is social media addictive? Here is what the science says.
• There are many tools that allow parents to monitor and set limits on their children’s screen time. Here’s what to know about them.
• A new book argues that banning social media isn’t the answer to online safety. Instead, the author says parents should emphasize the importance of digital literacy and privacy.