California, home to some of the world's largest technology companies, will be the first US state to mandate mental health warning labels on social media sites if lawmakers pass a bill introduced on Monday.
Supporters say the legislation sponsored by state Attorney General Rob Bonta is necessary to promote children's online safety, but industry officials have vowed to fight this and other similar measures under the First Amendment. Social media warning labels quickly gained bipartisan support from dozens of attorneys general, including Bonta, after U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy called on Congress to set requirements earlier this year, saying social media was a contributing factor in the crisis. Mental health among young people. .
“These companies recognize the harmful impact their products can have on our children, and refuse to take meaningful steps to make them safer,” Bonta said in a press conference on Monday. “Time is up. It is time to step in and demand change.”
State officials did not provide details about the bill, but Bonta said the warning labels could appear once a week.
As many as 95% of young people ages 13 to 17 say they use a social media platform, and more than a third say they use social media “almost constantly,” according to 2022 data from the Pew Research Center. Parents' concerns prompted Australia to pass the world's first law banning social media use for children under 16 in November.
“The promise of social media, while real, has turned into a situation where they are turning our children’s attention into a commodity,” Assemblywoman Rebecca Bauer-Kahan, who authored the California bill, said Monday. “The attention economy is using our children and their well-being to make money for these California companies.”
Todd O'Boyle, vice president of the technology industry policy group Chamber for Progress, said lawmakers should instead focus on online safety education and mental health resources, not warn off bills deemed “constitutionally unsound.”
“We strongly believe that the courts will set this aside as coercive speech,” O'Boyle told the Associated Press.
Victoria Hinks' 16-year-old daughter, Alexandra, died by suicide four months ago after being “led down the dark rabbit holes” of social media that highlighted eating disorders and self-harm. Hincks said the posters will help protect children from companies that turn a blind eye to the harm caused to children's mental health when they become addicted to social media platforms.
“There is no doubt in my body that doubts that social media played a role in leading her to this final and irreversible decision,” Hincks said. “This could be your story.”
Common Sense Media, the bill's sponsor, said it plans to push for similar proposals in other states.
In the past decade, California has positioned itself as a leader in regulating and fighting the technology industry to promote children's online safety.
The state was the first in 2022 to ban online platforms from using users' personal information in ways that could harm children. It was one of the states that sued Meta in 2023 and TikTok in October for intentionally designing addictive features that keep kids addicted to their platforms.
Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, also signed several bills in September to help limit the effects of social media on children, including one to prohibit social media platforms from providing addictive feeds to children without parental consent and one to limit or prohibit students from providing addictive feeds to children without parental consent. From that. Using smartphones on school campus.
Federal lawmakers have held hearings on children's online safety, and legislation is in the works to force companies to take reasonable steps to prevent harm. This legislation is supported by the owner of Company X, Elon Musk, and the son of the president-elect, Donald Trump Jr. However, the last federal law aimed at protecting children online was enacted in 1998, six years before Facebook was founded.
