Google, TikTok and Meta Sue to Block California's Teen Social Media Law

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Rachel Myhre (0:52)

Welcome to Forum. I'm Rachel Myhroin for Mina Kim.

AB 1709 sailed through the California Legislature without a single no vote last legislative session. Starting January 1st, it will bar big social media platforms from giving kids under 16 personalized feeds, autoplay and other features the law calls addictive. But Google, Meta and TikTok each sued in federal court to block it. The companies say it's an unconstitutional restriction on speech. The bill's author says it regulates product design, not speech. So this is a great opportunity to talk with the bill's author. And that would be Assemblymember Josh Lowenthal, representing the 69th California District.

Assemblymember, thank you for being with us.

Josh Lowenthal (1:47)

Well, I appreciate the interest.

Rachel Myhre (1:49)

We also have here in studio, Aaron Mak, tech reporter for Politico. Thank you for being here.

Aaron Mak (1:54)

Thank you for having me.

Rachel Myhre (1:55)

Well, Assemblymember, why don't we start with that first moment you were inspired to kickstart AB 1709? Was there a eureka moment, maybe a news story that prompted you to think a California law could solve this problem?

Josh Lowenthal (2:11)

Oh no, I'm a dad. I've got a 16 year old, a 14 year old and a 12 year old.

I literally have a laboratory in my home. I see firsthand the impacts that are taking place on the Sanctus generation.

And very fortunately, I'm in a position to actually do something about it. I also come at this as a former executive and entrepreneur in the tech sector. So I also have the lens of what it's like, the pressure to always be returning to shareholders, to board members, always having more engagement, more traffic, more revenue than the quarter before, projecting higher and higher and not thinking about the impacts. And lo and behold, we've gotten to this place where we have awful outcomes in youth mental health. And it's clear that we had to do something about it. We have a responsibility to do something about it. And California is the place to do it.

Rachel Myhre (3:02)

Aaron, how settled is the research on social media? And I'm thinking especially teen mental health. And how did it figure in the debate over this bill in Sacramento?

Aaron Mak (3:13)

Yeah, so it's notable that social media addiction is not an official diagnosis in the DSM-5, although the DSM-5 has notoriously been outdated in the past.

There's definitely emerging evidence. A lot of this debate was kicked off by a report from Vivek Murthy, the former Surgeon General. He said there's convincing emerging evidence on this. But I think a big problem for researchers is that the companies often don't provide the data necessary to do that research to settle it more.

Rachel Myhre (3:45)

It's kind of a black box. Well, Assemblymember, let's dig into the details of the new law.

I'm going to take you through three questions in an attempt to keep this as simple as possible. But number one, let's say I'm a 15-year-old. What do I stop seeing on January 1st on, let's say, Instagram and YouTube?

Josh Lowenthal (4:08)

We're going to keep this as simple as possible. We're going to go back in time.

This effectively enables the platforms to create a kids version that looks a lot like social media did 10, 15 years ago. When social media was about your universe, the people that you know, that you could connect with them, update what's going on with your life and see what's happening in their life. Very, very different than the internet that we have today. The social media of today, we're less than 7% of what we consume is about anybody that we know. And so you have children that are in these algorithmically driven, infinite scrolling, autoplay, notifications happening through the night, designed, engineered for addiction to keep them online as long as possible. And let's talk about what that actually means in practice. And practice, it's on average, five hours a day children are spending on social media, seven to nine hours a day on screens. But five hours a day on average, when you consider weekends and holidays, that means that kids are spending more time on social media than they are in school.