California names the four social media features that have to go for kids under 16

California just told social media platforms to remove the addictive plumbing, including algorithms, infinite scroll, autoplay, and push notifications, from the version of the app they show kids under 16, or to delete those accounts. The law takes effect Jan. 1, 2027. It does not restrict access. It restricts the product design.

AB 1709, signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom on Sept. 10, 2026, names the features it wants gone: recommendation algorithms, infinite scroll, autoplay video, and push notifications. Any platform that serves a user it knows or should know is under 16 has to strip those features from that user's experience, or remove the account entirely. The bill also creates a state e-safety advisory commission to monitor platform compliance. The governor's office paired the social media law with a separate child-safety measure for AI chatbots on the same day, calling the combined package the strongest in the country (release).

The companion bill, AB 2, gives the rule teeth. It raises civil damages available when a platform is found negligent in harming a child to up to $1 million, or three times actual damages, whichever is greater. That is a leverage change, not a windfall. It operates through existing negligence law, so a family still has to prove harm. But the cap now sits in a range that makes platform legal teams pay attention, and the bill removes procedural barriers that had been keeping most cases from getting past a motion to dismiss.

Lead author Assemblyman Josh Lowenthal, a Long Beach Democrat, calls the package accountability rather than a shutdown. Children spend an average of five hours a day on social media, he said at the signing, and the question is who carries the cost when the product is built to extend that time. "We're putting the onus on the platforms themselves, not on children and families," Lowenthal said, per the syndicated wire. Common Sense Media and other child-safety advocates publicly backed the signature, calling the pair the strongest child-safety social media and chatbot laws in the country.

The bill preserves access for the kids who need online communities, including LGBTQ+ and other marginalized youth who often rely on those spaces. Platforms that want to keep serving under-16 users have a defined path: serve them a non-addictive version. In practice, that means a chronological feed with manual refresh, no autoplay queue, no notification pings, and a content recommendation system that does not learn from prior session behavior. That is the lever the law gives industry, and it is also the part most likely to be litigated.

The legal exposure cuts in two directions. Treating the recommendation algorithm, the autoplay queue, and the notification cadence as protected editorial choices is a serious first-amendment claim, and the bill's age-verification burden makes deletion the only operationally simple response. If major platforms conclude that the design constraint is unconstitutional, they will choose to delete California under-16 accounts and fight the rule in court rather than rebuild the product for one state. The compliance question then becomes a court question, and the Jan. 1 clock is the countdown.

Independent coverage from the Guardian and KQED treated the signature as a test case for the dozen other states weighing similar bills. Whether AB 1709 is enforced as a product-design rule, or settles into a symbolic line on a platform's age-gate screen, will be decided in the next 110 days, by compliance teams and in court filings, before any teen in California logs in on Jan. 1.