EFF Urges Newsom to Veto the Bill Banning Social Media for Teens

The California Legislature has approved AB 1709, a bill that amounts to a sweeping ban on social media use for anyone under 16. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has called the initiative well-intentioned but deeply misguided, and urged Governor Gavin Newsom to veto it.

What the law bans

If AB 1709 takes effect in January, platforms will be barred from offering users under 16 virtually any functioning recommendation algorithms, and even basic mechanics — such as a feed based on subscriptions or “likes.” The law brands these features “addictive,” even though, as the EFF points out, they in fact merely help services figure out what content a user might find interesting and allow creators themselves to find their audience and community.

Since nearly all major services are built on automated feeds, the outcome is straightforward: teens under 16 will effectively lose access to the main digital venues in their current form. The “addictiveness” label, in the EFF's view, rests on broad generalizations drawn from the still-unsettled science on how social media affects young people.

Privacy and free speech

The EFF calls the bill “a privacy and free speech nightmare.” Barring access to digital venues does not make teens safer or healthier; research shows that such restrictions are ineffective and may cause harm by denying young people the chance to develop their own voice — to share art, practice religion, or engage in politics. Especially vulnerable are teens from marginalized groups, who often find support precisely in online communities that are unavailable to them offline.

A separate objection concerns the age-verification mechanisms. To screen out users under 16, platforms will be forced to resort to intrusive methods: requesting government-issued IDs or conducting biometric scans. This will compel everyone, without exception, to share even more personal data with big tech companies, creating “honeypots” of sensitive information and raising the risk of breaches.

Finally, the EFF points to legal confusion: the provisions of AB 1709 conflict with the already-enacted laws AB 1043 and SB 976. Instead of clarity, the state risks expending resources defending a law that will almost certainly get bogged down in litigation. The full text of the appeal to the governor is available on the organization's website.

Source: EFF Deeplinks