Social media companies design their feeds to be as engaging as possible, with complicated algorithms that shuffle posts and ads into an endless stream of entertainment.

A new law in California would force businesses to close

away from those who do that

algorithm

soft

standard for users under 18 years old,

and implement it

other mandatory adjustments

to the user experience

so say lawmakers

would like

reduce the negative mental health effects of social media on children.

The bill, called the Protecting Kids from Social Media Addiction Act by its author,

Eastern Bay

stands

Sen.

Nancy Skinder

(D-Berkeley),

was announced at noon

news

conference with California

Attorney General

a

tty. Gene.

Rob Bonta on Monday, alongside another bill that would tighten privacy protections for minors.

“Social media companies have the ability to protect our children,” Skinner said. “They could have acted, but they didn’t.”

One of the law’s key provisions is to make a chronological feed the default on platforms, which shows users’ posts from the people they follow in the order they were posted.

uploadedposted

rather than

controlling the mix

content to maximize engagement.

This change would show young users “the things they want to see, as opposed to the addictive algorithmic feed currently fed to our children,” Bonta said.

The law would also require social media apps’ default settings to mute notifications between midnight and 6 a.m., limit use to one hour per day and remove the visibility of like counts. Parents, and in practice probably the children who use these apps, would have the option to change these default settings

and add additional times to mute notifications

.

Striking hotel workers were hit by metal ball bearings, union says

Assemblymember Buffy Wicks

(D-Oakland),

who submitted the bill to tighten privacy protection for minors,

argue that said

changing the settings can bring great benefits

children

.

‘We know there are children who want to change the standard

S

setting,” Wicks said, “but the default setting is a very powerful tool.”

The new bills are just the latest in a series of legislative and regulatory actions taken by California lawmakers and advocates in recent years

try to focus on and

Change the way social media companies do business.

In October, Bonta’s office filed a lawsuit against Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, along with 32 other states, alleging that the company

it’s theirs

apps that specifically target addicted young users while misleading the public about the adverse effects of these “harmful and psychologically manipulative platform features.”

Parts of internal company documents in that lawsuit show that Meta knew that

well more than

one million children under the age of 13 used Instagram, while company officials publicly stated that underage users were not allowed

on use

the platform. The lawsuit also alleges that Mark Zuckerberg, the company’s CEO, personally vetoed a proposal that would have banned filters that simulate the effects of plastic surgery, despite criticism of its negative effect on girls’ mental health.

Bonta’s office also won a $93 million settlement last year in a case against Google alleging the company deceived users by collecting their location data for ad targeting and other applications after they opted out.

But an earlier law aimed at restricting the treatment of young users by social media companies ran into trouble in court last year. A federal judge in San Jose issued a temporary injunction against the California Age-Appropriate Design Code Act in September, ruling that the law likely violates

First 1st

Change rights of the technology companies it wants to regulate.

The law, which w

as co-author of

Assemblymember Wicks

co-author

And

What

signed into law in 2022 would require companies to provide standard privacy protections to children. The court found that enforcement of these provisions may require more data collection

,

to verify the age of certain users

,

or limit the content that adult users were allowed to view. Bonta’s office is appealing the decision.

Lawmakers on Monday

news

The conference cited research published last year by the U.S. Surgeon General as evidence

by

the harm that the use of social media causes to minors. That report found that “adolescents who spend more than three hours a day on social media have double the risk of poor mental health outcomes,” Nearly half of adolescents said social media made them feel worse about their body image, and a majority regularly saw “hate-based content”.

“Profit is being made off our children at the expense of their well-being,” says Skinner

on

Monday. The new law “is designed to prevent these highly avoidable harms.”