California Governor Gavin Newsom signed a bill on Thursday that prohibits large social platforms from offering addictive features to users under 16. It is the first law of its kind in the United States, and it will be copied, challenged, and dissected before it ever reaches a teenager’s For You page.
The text targets design, not speech: infinite scroll, streak mechanics, autoplay that does not ask, notifications engineered to pull a minor back. Platforms will say they already have teen modes. The law says those modes are not enough if the default is still a slot machine.
NetChoice has already sued Illinois over a pair of digital taxes. A California design law is a more interesting fight, because it goes to product. If a court lets the definition of “addictive feature” stand, engineering teams in Menlo Park and Culver City will have to ship a California binary. If a court does not, the bill becomes a press release with a chapter number.
The political logic is simple. Parents are tired. Congress is slow. California still has the user base to move a national product. The legal logic is harder. Every feature that makes an app sticky for an adult looks, in a complaint, like a feature that makes it sticky for a child.
