Governor Newsom signs bill to protect kids from social media addiction

Banning phones from school as the default should have been included.

I really wish legislation like this was structured as an experiment, so we could robustly determine if it worked. Otherwise someone will come along in ten years and rip it out, saying there’s no evidence it improved things.

Nothing but praise but I wonder how can it be implemented? Facebook and other social platforms already have set an age limit that kids usually bypass.

Instagram and TikTok saw this coming. Both have recently dropped features to meet the spirit of this law.

TikTok now has "feed mirroring" for adults to use with their teens, so they can see what the algorithm is pushing at them. And Instagram now has a teen mode that lets parents choose which topics show up in their feed and disables notifications at night.

This looks stupid.

If I am reading the legislation [0] correctly, teenagers now have to tell Spotify what song to play one after another, every single time one track ends. Unless someone has previously made a playlist (I think) - in which case you can only listen to playlists that you or (someone else has made) if you are a teenager.

I'm surprised that the music industry let this happen to them.

[0] https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm...

For this interested in topic, you might enjoy reading The Anxious Generation, which has been on the NYT nonfiction bestseller list for a while. It goes into the data on how teen mental illness rates greatly increased when smartphones (apps + the front-facing camera) and social media algorithms were developed. The harmful effects are obvious to anyone who ever interacts with kids. The book also proposes several basic changes like delaying when kids are given smartphones and disallowing phones in schools, as well as advocating for play-based schools.

> prohibits online platforms from knowingly providing an addictive feed to a minor without parental consent

totally onboard with the concept; but what is the burden of proof that a feed is "addictive"? If it falls on the state, then this probably won't have much effect (other than maybe to scare tech companies to be a bit more careful, which is maybe the best we can hope for)

I'm sad about how smartphones have turned out. The effects are entirely dependent on how they are used. If used as a portable information retrieval device, camera, and communications tool, they make us smarter than ever before. But it seems most people have instead chosen to focus on attention-stealing data collection apps that encourage neuroticism, narcissism, and anxiety.

We had envisioned something like PADDs on Star Trek or the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, but what we got was an jingly electronic mirror that bullies you. I don't know how we are so okay with this. Keeping phones out of schools is not the cure. Keeping evil and harmful apps off the phones is a more precise solution.

Florida already passed a similar law. Nice to see both left and right can agree that some things are common sense.

It's crazy how far from scientific consensus these extremist states on both "sides" of the USA have strayed in their performative legislation. There is no such thing as social media addiction no matter how many times celebrities, politicians, and scammer detox camp repeat it. It's not that the DSM V or ICD 10 haven't addressed the issues. They repeatedly have and each time come away saying there's no evidence to support using the word addiction to describe computer or other rich multimedia system usage. If this were 1800s it'd be a bill banning newspaper addiction. 1900s banning electrical addiction. 1920s, radio addiction, 1950s TV addiction. Whatever is the big new thing involving lots of money (and so attention from these kinds of people).

But it's not just funny sad: it also has real effects on real people and invokes the use of force in a situation where there is no coercion or damage being done.

If I lie to Facebook and say I'm a minor, can I get a non-algorithmic feed? If so, it might be usable again.

It seems Internet alone brought science and commerce but social media exposed and unleashed idiots.

We're at the point where we have a pretty high percentage of about 3-4 generations of people who are probably clinically addicted to phones/social media. We're slowly starting to come to this realization as a society but escaping addiction is extremely difficult. Especially a new one, that has no name yet, that we don't understand well, that has enveloped a large percentage of us. It's definitely an uphill battle.

Doesn’t do enough

The TL;DR: for "addictive feeds" is basically blocking a feed that is built based on their previous interactions with posts (whether associated via the device or the account). Doesn't impact searches or followed feeds.

So, you can still use TikTok or Facebook or Instagram, just without the hyper-personalized discovery/FYP/etc feeds.

I'm cautiously optimistic, since this kind of block doesn't really create a moat around existing businesses. And frankly, I like that kind of non-personalized feed sometimes.

EDIT: Downvoters, that's from the text of the bill itself. I recommend reading it if you don't trust (or don't like) this TL;DR.

“Addictive feed” has quite a ring to it, doesn’t it. Conjures the image of someone eating out of a trough. It’s a good piece of legalese propaganda.