Government isn’t particularly efficient at regulating anything, but it’s always out of its league when it tries to control evolving online technologies. That doesn’t stop it from trying, as is the case with legislation Gov. Gavin Newsom signed last week. The governor touted the bill as something that will protect children from social-media “addiction,” but it will do no such thing.
“Every parent knows the harm social media addiction can inflict on their children – isolation from human contact, stress and anxiety, and endless hours wasted late into the night,” Newsom said in a statement. “California is helping protect children and teenagers from purposely designed features that feed these destructive habits.”
Senate Bill 976 “prohibits operators of ‘internet-based services or ‘applications’ from providing ‘addictive feeds’ … to minors without parental consent and from sending notifications to minors at night and during school hours without parental consent.” What are these “purposely designed features” that promote a nearly drug-like online addiction?
In simple English, the law forbids social-media companies from curating feeds based on the interests of younger app users, which the law defines as an “addictive feed.” If a child or teen-ager is interested in, say, raising guinea pigs, gardening, bicycling and pop music, the social-media sites prioritize news and information that caters to those particular interests. The governor has in effect mandated the use of chronological feeds instead.
That means youngsters will be forced to sift through reams of information that doesn’t interest them – and they will be subject to feeds (including “bad actors”) from those who post items most frequently. As prominent California tech groups wrote in opposing the legislation, “This means that their friends’ posts and content will be drowned out by brands and influencers employing teams of people to post throughout the day” and from those who tend to “spread more low quality or harmful content.”
The groups (TechNet, NetChoice, the California Chamber of Commerce and the Computer & Communications Industry Association) also fearthe legislation provides de facto “age verification,” which means all California app users will have to somehow prove that they are adults. The legislation doesn’t mandate an identification system, but any law that requires protections for children has to find some way to verify all users’ personal information.
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That leaves everyone more vulnerable to identity theft. It also raises the same constitutional questions that all such systems raise, which means lengthy and costly lawsuits rather than actual protections. Then again, we suspect the legislative language is not as important as the publicity. It’s likely courts will toss such vague laws, but politicians can still say they did something about a problem.
Even media coverage seems to echo politicians’ narratives. For instance, The Los Angeles Times reported that “California took a major step in its fight to protect children from the ills of social media with Gov. Gavin Newsom’s signature on a bill to limit the ability of companies to provide ‘addictive feeds’ to minors.” Yet this “major step” won’t do anything to protect The Children.
It will burden businesses, encroach on adults’ ability to access internet information and will make kids more vulnerable to advertisers and bad actors. In other words, it’s about what one would expect from a Legislature that’s addicted to grandstanding over policy making.