A Bill Built on a Real Problem
The case for AB 1709 is not frivolous. Assemblymember Josh Lowenthal's bill, which passed the California Assembly and Senate unanimously on August 31, 2026, targets design features — recommendation algorithms, infinite scroll, autoplay, and push notifications — that platforms themselves have optimized for engagement, not wellbeing. Common Sense Media CEO Jim Steyer captured the legislature's mood bluntly: "Tech companies ran the tobacco playbook on kids, and this is social media's Big Tobacco moment" (KRCR). Adolescent compulsive-use patterns tied to algorithmic feeds are well documented, and a legislature responding to that evidence with narrower feature restrictions — rather than a blanket ban — would be defensible policy. That is, in fact, roughly what California already tried once.
What AB 1709 Actually Does
AB 1709 requires that any "covered platform" withhold "addictive features" — statutorily defined to include algorithmic feeds, autoplay, infinite scroll, and notifications — from any user under 16. Where a platform cannot offer a feature-free version, it must delete the minor's account and associated personal data entirely. The bill creates an e-Safety Advisory Commission inside the Department of Justice to guide enforcement, and empowers the Attorney General or local prosecutors to seek civil penalties of up to $50,000 per affected minor for knowing violations and $25,000 for negligent ones (California Legislature, AB 1709 bill text). It was enrolled September 4, 2026, and would take effect January 1, 2027, if Governor Newsom signs it — timed to California's Digital Age Assurance Act, the age-verification framework it leans on to distinguish under-16 users from everyone else.
That last detail is the crux of the objection. To withhold a feature from users under 16, a platform must first determine every user's age. AB 1709 does not mandate a specific method, but EFF argues that leaves platforms only one practical option: government ID uploads or biometric estimation, applied to the entire user base, not just the minors the law targets (EFF, "Veto California's AB 1709"). EFF's veto letter calls the bill "a massive privacy and free speech nightmare," arguing it "cuts young people off from essential information and experiences, particularly harming vulnerable youth and marginalized groups who often find safety in supportive online communities they can't access offline." That is a serious point, not activist boilerplate: LGBTQ teens, kids in abusive households, and rural youth disproportionately rely on the exact peer communities and information access AB 1709 would strip from anyone the platform can't verify as 16 or older — and account deletion, unlike a settings change, is not reversible if the platform gets the age determination wrong.
The Precedent California Already Set — And Ignored
What makes AB 1709 particularly hard to defend is that California ran this experiment already, and courts already drew a line. SB 976, the 2024 Protecting Our Kids from Social Media Addiction Act, restricted addictive feeds and notification timing for minors but preserved parental-consent opt-ins and did not require account deletion or platform-wide identity verification as the default. In NetChoice v. Bonta, the Ninth Circuit ruled on September 9, 2025 that SB 976's default-private-account and addictive-feed-consent provisions survived intermediate scrutiny — but the court struck down the provision hiding "like" counts from minors, calling it unlawful content-based speech regulation, because California could achieve the same interest through less restrictive means (JURIST). The lesson from that ruling was narrow and specific: restrictions calibrated to actual, provable harms and the least-restrictive-means available survive; ones that reach further than necessary do not.
AB 1709 reaches further on every axis. Where SB 976 let parents consent their teens back into algorithmic feeds, AB 1709 has no such opt-in — no under-16 user gets a personalized feed no matter what a parent wants. Where SB 976's age-check obligation was narrowly tied to specific features, AB 1709's account-deletion mandate creates a much stronger incentive for blanket identity verification across the entire user base, precisely the harder-to-defend design a court applying strict scrutiny to content-based speech restrictions is likely to scrutinize hardest. Legislators who watched the Ninth Circuit uphold the narrower law and strike the broader provision within the same statute had the blueprint in hand. AB 1709 does not follow it.
What Newsom Should Weigh
Governor Newsom has said publicly he supports restricting under-16 social media access and, per reporting, wants exactly this kind of legislation — so a veto is not a certainty. But the honest case for signing AB 1709 has to reckon with the NetChoice record: California already has an addictive-feed law surviving federal appellate review, with a public comment process for its implementing regulations still underway. Layering a more sweeping, ID-dependent, deletion-mandating law on top of it before that regulatory process even concludes risks tying up AB 1709 in the same litigation cycle SB 976 is still working through — and inviting a court to strike provisions that a narrower version of this bill would have survived. Proportionate regulation of engagement-optimized design features for minors is a legitimate state interest. A law that can't distinguish itself from a general-purpose age-verification mandate is not the way to vindicate it.