Google, Meta and TikTok sue California to block law protecting children from risk of addiction | Technology

Google, Meta and TikTok have sued California to block enforcement of a new state law intended to limit the risk of children under 16 becoming addicted to social media platforms.

The law, known as Assembly Bill 1709, prohibits these platforms from offering minors “psychological exploitation features” that could lead to compulsive use, such as providing personal recommendations and sending videos via autoplay features. This also requires deleting child accounts with these features.

In separate lawsuits Wednesday, Google, Meta and TikTok said the law wrongly required them to honor California’s preferred way of presenting content to children and substituted the state’s judgment for that of parents.

They said the law violates the free speech protections of the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment, as well as Section 230 of the federal Communications Decency Act, which broadly protects online platforms from liability over user content.

The office of Rob Bonta, California’s attorney general, who enforces state laws and is the sole defendant, said Thursday it was reviewing the lawsuits. “Our office is committed to upholding common-sense California laws to protect children online.”

Google owns YouTube and is a unit of Alphabet, while Meta owns Facebook and Instagram. TikTok is a unit of the Chinese company ByteDance.

Governor Gavin Newsom signed the law on September 10, saying that child safety should be at the heart of any discussion about technology, and that California “will not stand idly by while unregulated technology puts our children at risk.”

The law takes effect on January 1, 2027, unless a judge overturns or suspends it.

“Parents are in the best position to make the right decisions for their families,” José Castaneda, a Google spokesperson, said Thursday. “Overbroad laws like this violate the systems we have in place to help kids find high-quality, age-appropriate videos.”

In its lawsuit, Meta said California cannot override its editorial judgments on how to manage and display billions of posts, while leaving children free to spend unlimited time on other online platforms offering similar services.

TikTok, meanwhile, said protected speech “cannot be removed solely to protect young people from ideas or images that a legislative body deems inappropriate.”

Other critics have also accused California of going too far. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit digital rights group, called the law “a massive privacy and free speech nightmare.”

Many US states regulate children’s access to social media. Countries around the world have similar restrictions, including Australia’s ban on social media for children under 16.

In August, Meta agreed to pay up to $18 billion and limit teens’ use of Facebook and Instagram in settlements with nearly every U.S. state, which accused it of violating privacy and consumer protection laws.

Following whistleblower revelations showing Meta was aware of how its platforms were harming teens, Meta launched a suite of teen safety tools aimed at giving parents more oversight. The company has already used influencers to promote these features around the world as an alternative to social media bans or limitations similar to those in Australia.

Google has recently been criticized for using its AI tools on school devices. California parents filed a lawsuit against the company on Thursday, alleging their teenage daughter considered ending her life after multiple interactions with AI Mode in Google Search. She had access to AI mode via the Google Chromebook provided by her school. The company was also recently forced to reverse its decision to cut off a school or classroom’s access to Google Search if teachers or administrators decided not to enable Google’s other AI features for schools.

Google filed the lawsuit in federal court in San Jose, California. Meta filed the lawsuit in San Francisco and TikTok in Los Angeles.

The companies and Snapchat’s parent company, Snap, still face thousands of lawsuits from individuals, school districts, municipalities and other government entities claiming they sought to addict children and caused a mental health crisis that led to harm such as anxiety, depression and suicide.