Governor Newsom signs bill to protect kids from social media addiction

Implementation and School Phone Bans

• Many argue real protection should include default bans on phones in schools, at least during class.
• Suggested enforcement mechanisms: locked cubbies, phone-locking pouches, Faraday-cage classrooms, or simple “no use in class” rules with detention/confiscation.
• Others highlight practical barriers: liability for expensive phones, inconsistent discipline, parents demanding instant access to kids, and administrators undermining teachers.
• Some charter schools successfully require phones to stay in lockers; in other places, attempts collapse under parental pressure.
• Edge cases raise concern: phones used as medical interfaces (e.g., for blood sugar monitoring), safety/anonymity for marginalized students (e.g., closeted trans kids), and using phones to record misconduct.

Scope of the California Law (“Addictive Feeds”)

• The law targets companies, not students, by restricting “addictive feeds” for minors without parental consent.
• “Addictive feed” is defined as a recommendation feed personalized using a user’s past behavior or device-linked data; search and purely chronological/followed feeds are allowed.
• Some see this as a measured way to dial back algorithmic engagement without creating big moats for incumbents.
• Others worry about odd side effects (e.g., music recommendations for teens) or say it’s toothless without universal age/ID verification. A minority want social media banned entirely for minors.

Parents, Schools, and the State

• One camp says enforcing limits is a parental job; statewide rules are “legislative theater.”
• Another argues parents have broadly failed under current incentives, and state-level backing is needed so schools can resist litigious or overbearing parents.
• Supporters point to other child-focused mandates (vaccines, free meals, dental coverage) as precedent for overriding poor parenting.

Is “Social Media Addiction” Real?

• Skeptics claim “addiction” is misapplied, not recognized in diagnostic manuals, and distracts from structural causes of youth distress (economy, pandemic, climate, politics).
• Others cite a growing body of research linking heavy, algorithmic social media use to increased depression and anxiety in teens, especially girls, and argue the precautionary principle justifies regulation.
• Some note evidence is mixed but see low downside in restricting minors’ access to optimized feeds versus plausible large upside.

Civil Liberties, Surveillance, and Motives

• Several comments distrust “protect the children” framing, seeing a history of moral panics (TV, video games) and fear this could become a vehicle for censorship, surveillance, ID-gated internet use, or targeting vulnerable groups and dissenting political views.
• Others emphasize that platform-level microtargeting and opaque algorithms themselves threaten democratic discourse and warrant stronger transparency and regulation.

Broader Reflections on Smartphones and Design

• Multiple commenters lament that smartphones, envisioned as powerful tools (information access, cameras, communication), are dominated by attention-maximizing apps that encourage anxiety, narcissism, and distraction.
• Some argue the true problem is not devices or even school usage per se, but engagement-optimized “addictive feeds”; they favor curbing those for everyone, with adults able to opt into non-personalized experiences.
• There is a desire to treat such laws as explicit experiments with outcome measurement, though skepticism that politicians actually want rigorous evaluation.