What California just enacted
On September 10, 2026, Governor Gavin Newsom signed a package of 12 child-online-safety bills. The most consequential is AB 1709, chaptered as Chapter 183. According to the bill text, it bars "covered platforms", meaning services that offer addictive features as a significant part of their product, from providing those features to users under 16. Platforms must determine users' ages, and they must delete under-16 accounts unless the platform offers accounts without the addictive features. Only the Attorney General or a local public prosecutor can enforce it. Civil penalties reach up to $50,000 per affected minor for knowing violations and $25,000 for negligent ones.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation, which urged a veto on August 31, calls the law a functional ban on social media for under-16s. It says the bill's age-assurance requirement can involve government IDs and biometric scanning, and it reports a January 2027 start date. The bill text we reviewed does not clearly state an operative date, so readers should check the final chaptered version.
The strongest case for the law
Supporters have a serious argument. Engagement-optimized feeds, autoplay and notification loops are product design choices, and a legislature can reasonably say that a 13-year-old is not equipped to resist them. Parents face collective-action problems: a child who opts out risks social exclusion. Regulating the design of a product is also a traditional state function. It is not the same thing as censoring a message. In September 2025 the Ninth Circuit made that point in a related California case, upholding the addictive-feed provisions of SB 976 and default-private accounts for minors while the case continues. That court held NetChoice lacked standing on the feed provisions because the analysis varies by platform.
Where the design argument runs out
That same Ninth Circuit ruling shows the limit. The court struck down the requirement to hide like counts from minors as an unconstitutional content-based restriction that failed strict scrutiny, because California had not shown it was the least restrictive means. The court was willing to accept design-conduct rules, but it would not accept a rule that shaped what minors see without proof that it was narrowly tailored.
AB 1709 is harder to defend on those terms. A blanket age gate on a category of services does not fine-tune a feature. It conditions access to lawful speech and association on proof of age. The Supreme Court has been wary of this for a long time. In Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association, decided June 27, 2011, it struck down California's own law restricting the sale of violent video games to minors. The law failed strict scrutiny, and the Court refused to let a legislature create new categories of unprotected speech by weighing a category's value against its social costs. If California could not shield minors from violent games on the strength of contested harm evidence, it will have to do considerably better to justify cutting off an entire medium of communication for everyone under 16.
The costs the statute imposes on everyone
The constitutional problem carries a practical one. To find the under-16s, a platform has to check everyone's age. EFF's analysis is that this means collecting government IDs or biometrics and concentrating that data in corporate hands, which turns a child-safety law into a privacy hazard for adults and children alike. Vulnerable teenagers, such as LGBTQ+ youth or those in unsupportive homes, are the ones EFF says often find community online that they cannot find offline. They are also the ones most hurt by exclusion.
The penalty structure compounds the risk. With exposure of up to $50,000 per minor, a platform's rational response to uncertainty is over-removal: delete accounts, restrict features broadly, and err against teenagers. That creates a chilling effect on speech that no legislative finding addresses.
EFF also flags that AB 1709 overlaps with existing California statutes, AB 1043 and SB 976, creating conflicts. Layered, inconsistent obligations raise compliance costs for large platforms, which can absorb them, and for smaller services, which cannot. A proportionate regime should not pick winners by regulatory complexity.
A better package sat in the same signing
The most instructive detail is that the same signing included measures EFF supports. AB 2071 integrates digital wellness into middle- and high-school health curricula, teaching students to spot unhealthy habits and judge the credibility of content, including AI-generated media. AB 2298 adds cybersecurity and personal data protection concepts to recommended school curricula. These bills build skills, need no identity checks, and leave lawful speech alone. EFF's summary of the signing puts it as "real digital safety comes from preparation, not isolation."
What to watch
EFF also cites a French court decision in August 2026 striking down a similar under-15 ban, a sign that these measures face resistance abroad too. In the US, a challenge to AB 1709 is likely, and Brown supplies the framework the state will have to overcome. Legislators who want to help young people have tested alternatives: rules on specific features, data-minimization defaults, transparent design audits and education. Those approaches address conduct and leave the speech alone. The evidence for a categorical ban is contested, and the law's fate will depend on whether California can prove that a less restrictive option would not have worked.