The legislation, formally known as Assembly Bill 1709 (AB 1709), was signed into law by California Governor Gavin Newsom in September and is currently slated to take effect at the start of the upcoming new year. The statute targets foundational structural elements of modern social media platforms, prohibiting them from offering autoplay video formats and personalized, algorithmic feeds to users under 16 years of age. Furthermore, the law mandates that platforms must delete the accounts of underage users entirely if they fail to disable these specific features. Platforms that do not comply face severe financial penalties, including liability for fines of up to $50,000 per affected user under the age of 16.
The tech giants argue in their respective legal filings that AB 1709 runs afoul of the United States Constitution by infringing upon protected free speech rights and overriding their editorial decisions regarding how content is displayed and disseminated. Meta, for instance, contended that the law effectively violates the First Amendment. The company also argued that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act preempts state-level regulations of this nature. TikTok and Google have brought forward similar legal arguments, emphasizing the constitutional protections afforded to content curation.
In its legal complaint, Meta detailed the direct operational consequences of the law, noting that its platforms currently organize content feeds to include personalized recommendations and automatic media playback. Because of this architecture, the company argued, the Act would make it unlawful for Meta to disseminate speech to minors altogether and would compel the platform to delete minors’ accounts unless it fundamentally alters its longstanding engineering and content-distribution practices.
A spokesperson for TikTok echoed these sentiments in an emailed statement, calling AB 1709 a blatantly unconstitutional restriction on free expression. The spokesperson added that the law erodes the long-standing and protected practice of curating content based on user preferences, pointing out that this exact methodology is widely utilized across various media ecosystems, including bookstores, traditional television networks, and digital streaming services.
AB 1709 arrives amid a broader, global wave of legislation attempting to curb teen social media usage in response to rising concerns over adolescent mental health outcomes. However, the measure has drawn sharp criticism from digital rights organizations and civil liberties groups. Digital safety experts frequently caution against legislative mandates of this kind because they can inadvertently compromise the privacy and security of all platform users, including adults. To enforce age-gating and age-verification requirements, platforms are often compelled to collect vastly increased amounts of personal data from every individual who accesses the service.
During a recent press briefing, Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) Associate Director of State Affairs Rindala Alajaji voiced strong opposition to the law, highlighting its unintended privacy consequences. Alajaji explained that AB 1709 compels platforms to collect even more sensitive information from every single user, thereby invading everyone’s privacy and frustrating the public’s ability to remain anonymous online. She noted that while online surveillance by social media companies is inherently harmful, this bill paradoxically requires even more data collection, further concentrating corporate power in the hands of major tech companies rather than genuinely protecting ordinary users.
Alajaji also pointed out that teenagers have historically utilized social media as an instrumental tool for impactful digital activism. She cited notable historical examples such as the digital organizing efforts led by the survivors of the Parkland school shooting for the March for Our Lives movement, as well as climate activist Greta Thunberg’s ability to build a powerful global reach. As a functional ban on social media for youth under 16, Alajaji argued, AB 1709 cuts young people off from essential information and formative experiences, ultimately silencing the very demographic voices it ostensibly aims to protect.
The major tech platforms are primed to mount an aggressive legal defense against California’s law, drawing on experience from similar legal battles unfolding in jurisdictions around the world. This legal posture comes at a particularly sensitive time for Meta, which recently agreed to settle a massive children’s safety lawsuit brought by 29 U.S. states for up to $18 billion to resolve allegations regarding social media harms inflicted on minors.
Globally, legislative efforts targeting youth social media access have experienced mixed fortunes. In December 2025, Australia made international headlines by becoming the first country to institute an outright ban on social media for users under the age of 16. Meanwhile, France pursued a comparable legislative path, but the nation’s top constitutional court ultimately struck the law down, citing severe concerns regarding violations of constitutionally protected free expression rights.
In addition to free speech and privacy arguments, the tech companies maintain that AB 1709 improperly interferes with the rights and responsibilities of parents. They argue the law strips away parents’ ability to make nuanced, individualized decisions regarding their teenagers’ internet use through pre-existing parental control suites and account management tools.
A spokesperson for Google pointed out that features like autoplay on YouTube are already turned off for minors by default and emphasized that parents possess the direct capability to turn off their teens’ access to YouTube Shorts entirely. The spokesperson asserted that parents are best positioned to make the right decisions for their respective families, which is precisely why major platforms offer a range of robust protections and oversight tools designed to put parents firmly in control. Overly broad laws like California’s, the Google representative warned, actually break the carefully constructed systems that companies have built to help children find high-quality, age-appropriate video content.
In response to the lawsuits, a representative for California Attorney General Rob Bonta stated that the office is currently reviewing the legal filings and remains steadfastly committed to defending California’s commonsense laws designed to protect kids online.