In the rising fervor over social media and the youth mental health crisis, one piece of technology has received a lot of attention: the algorithm.
Algorithms鈥攚hich prioritize the posts we see on our social media feeds usually based on how likely we are to engage with the content鈥攈as made social media addictive to young people, hurting their mental health. Or so says California鈥檚 Protecting Our Kids from Social Media Addiction Act, which was signed into law by Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, on Sept. 20.
In a nutshell, the law makes it illegal for minors鈥� social media accounts to have what lawmakers describe as 鈥渁ddictive feeds鈥濃�攖hose that recommend or prioritize content based on information about the child鈥攗nless parents have given consent.
The law also requires parental consent for social media platforms to send notifications to minors between 12 a.m. and 6 a.m. year round and 8 a.m. and 3 p.m. during the weekdays from September through May鈥攖he critical time frames when kids should be asleep or engaged in learning at school. That鈥檚 where the new bill would likely have the biggest direct impact on schools, said Jeffrey Carpenter, a professor of education at Elon University who studies social media and its impact on education.
鈥淭hat is something that the schools can鈥檛 touch: They can ban cellphones in school, but schools have a lot less influence over what happens outside of school,鈥� he said. 鈥淚 do think those [notification restrictions] would be concretely helpful to schools if there is some help in limiting the distractions of all of the notifications.鈥�
The provisions of the law won鈥檛 go into full effect until January of 2027, when the state attorney general is tasked with hammering out the regulatory details.
The California law is part of a broader push by states and school districts鈥攖hrough legislation and lawsuits鈥攖o compel social media companies to take more aggressive action to retool their platforms so that they are less likely to hurt children鈥檚 mental health. New York passed a law earlier this year restricting the use of algorithmic feeds on minors鈥� social media accounts.
鈥淟awmakers certainly have the attention of these social media platforms now,鈥� said Taylor Barkley, the director of public policy at the Abundance Institute, a Utah-based think tank that focuses on public policy and emerging technology. 鈥淚 think there is a degree to which social media platforms should have been thinking much more intensely about these issues earlier.鈥�
A 2023 Utah law requires parental consent for minors to open social media accounts. But Barkley said that how, exactly, social media companies will comply with these parental consent provisions remains largely unanswered from policymakers.
Movement to reign in social media companies has bipartisan support
Those concerns have not slowed the movement to regulate social media companies, though. That, Barkley said, is because the problematic use of social media and cellphones by kids are rare issues that have bipartisan support to address, said Barkley.
鈥淚t鈥檚 fascinating to see two very different states鈥擟alifornia, big population, very progressive, left leaning, and Utah, you have 3 million people, very conservative, right leaning鈥攎eeting at the top of the circle with very similar public policies,鈥� he said.
The California law鈥檚 focus on parental consent might help it sidestep some constitutional concerns around free speech that have arisen with other legislation and district-led lawsuits directed at social media companies, said Eugene Volokh, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, and professor of law emeritus at UCLA.
鈥淭he fact that the law leaves it to the parents to decide is a plus for the law,鈥� he said. 鈥淚t doesn鈥檛 categorically say 鈥榳e think kids shouldn鈥檛 be able to access these things no matter what their parents say.鈥� Another plus is that it doesn鈥檛 target any particular viewpoint. It doesn鈥檛 go after supposedly racist speech or anti-trans speech, and it doesn鈥檛 even really target particular subject matter. It doesn鈥檛 target speech about sexual development, or about violence, or about anorexia. Those are pluses for the law.鈥�
But should the law face a legal challenge, it could still be found unconstitutional, said Volokh. Recent U.S. Supreme Court rulings in cases involving NetChoice, the industry trade association that represents several major social media and tech companies such as Meta, Snap, and X, found that social media companies鈥� moderating and curating of feeds is protected by the First Amendment.
NetChoice has warned that legislation like California鈥檚 could inadvertently block adult users from accessing certain content and could lead to social media platforms collecting more information on users, undermining online privacy.
In a letter to Gov. Newsom requesting he veto the California bill, NetChoice said: 鈥淲e share the sponsor鈥檚 goal to better protect minors from harmful content online. NetChoice members have taken issues of teen safety seriously and in recent years have rolled out numerous new features, settings, parental tools, and protections to better empower parents and assist in monitoring their children鈥檚 use of social media.鈥�
Does social media actually hurt youth mental health?
The U.S. surgeon general has both described the state of youth mental health as a crisis and pointed directly to social media as a potential source of the problem when recommending that social media platforms come with a health warning label.
Forty-two earlier this month endorsing the surgeon general鈥檚 proposal.
But other experts say that the research linking social media use to poor mental health among youth is limited and mixed.
While there is reason to be concerned about social media notifications disrupting children鈥檚 sleep and algorithms luring impressionable adolescents into increasingly harmful content鈥攆rom extreme violence to eating disorders to conspiracy theories鈥攖here is also research suggesting that social media can be good for young people. It can provide students with important peer networks and support, strengthen connections to far flung family members, and connect them to hobbies, resources, and causes they wouldn鈥檛 otherwise have access to.
For this reason, some LGBTQ+ youth advocates, including The Trevor Project, sent a letter this summer to the California Assembly speaker voicing opposition to the bill the state鈥檚 governor signed into law on Sept. 20.
Nearly three-quarters of high school students surveyed by the EdWeek Research Center earlier this year said that social media either had no impact or a positive impact on their mental health.
鈥淚 don鈥檛 know that we are being 100 percent honest with ourselves if we think all of the mental health challenges that teens experience are linked to social media,鈥� said Carpenter. 鈥淪ocial media is a contributor, and that鈥檚 why I think it鈥檚 good there is regulation, but I don鈥檛 think it鈥檚 a sole reason that schools are seeing the challenges that they are with students鈥� mental health.鈥�
