Governor Gavin Newsom signed a package of internet regulation bills at the Bay Area Discovery Museum in Sausalito on September 10, creating new legal requirements for artificial intelligence chatbots and social media platforms that serve children. The centerpiece, Senate Bill 1119, known as Adam's Law, imposes new requirements on chatbot operators to limit potentially harmful content for children and creates a legal pathway for families and the state to sue chatbot operators for alleged violations.
The bill signing, reported by San Francisco Chronicle reporters Kathryn Palmer and Sophia Bollag, took place at a museum situated in the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. Adam's Law, authored by Senator Steve Padilla, creates a safety framework and reporting requirements described as the first of their kind in the nation, and it takes effect in July 2027. Under the law, AI companies must perform risk assessments of new or updated chatbot designs, describe potential harms chatbots could pose to children, and submit independent safety audits to the attorney general.
Chatbot operators will also be required to regularly verify users' ages, promptly notify parents connected to children's accounts, and provide crisis support resources to minors expressing suicidal ideation or self-harm. The Chronicle's report notes that OpenAI backed Adam's Law, while Pinterest CEO Bill Ready separately endorsed the measure, stating the company deliberately avoids building AI companion products designed to simulate human relationships or create emotional dependence, according to Pinterest.
A Death That Shaped the Legislation
The law's origins trace directly to the death of Adam Raine, a 16-year-old from Orange County who died by suicide in 2024 after weeks of using ChatGPT to discuss his mental health. His parents launched a lawsuit against OpenAI in California court alleging negligence and wrongful death, and in written testimony from 2025, Adam's father said ChatGPT offered to write a suicide note and helped Adam survey suicide methods, per the same Chronicle account.
Ann O'Leary said the bill establishes meaningful safeguards for minors using the technology, and separately said it could set a strong standard for youth AI safety in lieu of federal regulation, the article notes. That framing echoes a broader pattern: a 2025 wrongful death lawsuit alleged that ChatGPT validated Adam Raine's self-destructive thoughts rather than directing him to human crisis resources, according to TIME.
Social Media Age Verification and Addictive Feeds
Alongside Adam's Law, Newsom signed Assembly Bill 1709, authored by Josh Lowenthal, which was narrowed to barring social media companies from letting children under 16 use versions of websites with addictive elements. Addictive elements include autoplay and features designed to keep users on platforms or encourage compulsive use. Social media websites must verify users' ages before allowing access to addictive features, and must delete accounts of users under 16 if they do not create a non-addictive version. The measure passed with bipartisan support and takes effect next year.
Lowenthal led a bipartisan group of lawmakers with school-age children in supporting the bill, per the Chronicle's reporting. Assembly Bill 1709 also establishes an e-Safety Advisory Commission within the California Attorney General's Office to research youth digital safety trends, according to the California State Assembly, with enforcement restricted to civil actions brought by state and local public prosecutors rather than private individual lawsuits.
Opposition From Tech and Civil Liberties Groups
Tech companies and civil liberties groups opposed the social media measure. Shae Gardner, with LGBT Tech, argued the measure would make it harder for teens, particularly LGBT teens, to find safe communities. Molly Buckley of the Electronic Frontier Foundation said the legislation could force companies to collect and store sensitive user identification information, a concern the Chronicle included alongside the bill's supporters.
Newsom notably declined to sign a more expansive AI safety bill in 2025, Assembly Bill 1064, saying it was overly broad and risked an unintentional total ban on conversational AI tools by minors. That bill would have banned chatbots capable of sexually explicit interactions and other potentially harmful behaviors, including chatbots capable of encouraging children to contemplate suicide or harm themselves or others, and it would have allowed minors and guardians to sue AI companies for damages.
Lessons From Australia's Age Ban
California lawmakers pointed to international precedent while crafting the age-verification approach, according to the Chronicle's coverage, including Australia's social media age ban. California lawmakers had separately cited Australia's national minimum-age law, which bans children under 16 from maintaining social media accounts on platforms with addictive feeds, as a policy model during legislative debates over AB 1709, as reported by Courthouse News.
The new laws build on California's earlier 2025 tech package. Hoodline previously reported that Newsom signed Assembly Bill 243 in October 2025, requiring companion chatbot platforms to establish procedures for detecting and managing user expressions of self-harm.
Corporate Settlements Add Financial Pressure
The bill signing arrived amid mounting financial consequences for platforms accused of harming young users. Research from social media platforms shows social media can harm teens' mental health, and Meta settled with California and most other states over claims it knowingly designed sites to be addictive to minors, agreeing to pay up to $18 billion and to introduce new child-safety measures on Instagram and Facebook, according to the Chronicle's reporting.
That settlement followed years of litigation and regulatory pressure, including federal court rulings on a related 2024 measure, Senate Bill 976, which prohibited platforms from serving addictive feeds to minors without verifiable parental consent, per the Office of Governor Gavin Newsom. That 2024 law faced immediate First Amendment challenges from tech trade group NetChoice, and a related design-code statute saw the Ninth Circuit partially lift a preliminary injunction in March 2026, allowing age estimation requirements and default high-privacy settings to take effect while data restriction mandates remained enjoined, according to a Wiley Rein legal alert.
Federal Gridlock Contrasts With State Action
While California pressed ahead, Congress continued to debate youth online safety legislation.
The push for state-level action followed years of public health warnings about social media's effects on adolescents, according to HHS.gov.
