A second bill seeks to safeguard minors’ privacy when using data.
A pair of legislation that are intended to protect youngsters from becoming addicted to social media and to preserve their private data will be introduced in the state of California. Attorney General Rob Bonta, State Senator Nancy Skinner, and Assemblymember Buffy Wicks presented the Protecting Youth from Social Media Addiction Act (SB 976) and the California Children’s Data Privacy Act (AB 1949) on Monday. Both of these bills are intended to protect children’s data privacy related to social media. The child safety bill in California, which was supposed to go into force this year but has since been put on hold, is the source of the new legislation.
SB 976 has the potential to provide parents with the authority to remove algorithmic feeds that are addicting from their children’s social media accounts. In the event that it is approved, it would provide parents of children under the age of 18 the option of selecting between the default algorithmic feed, which is often geared to generate profitable addictions, and a chronological feed that is less likely to build habits. Additionally, it would enable parents to ban all notifications from social media platforms and prohibit their children from accessing social media platforms throughout the evening and while they are at school.
Companies that operate social media networks have engineered their platforms to make people addicted, particularly our children. In a news statement, California Senator Nancy Skinner (D-Berkeley) stated that numerous studies have demonstrated that once a young person develops an addiction to social media, they face greater rates of sadness, anxiety, and low self-esteem. It is time for social media corporations to take action; we have waited long enough. There is an immediate need for Senate Bill 976 to establish reasonable boundaries in order to enable parents to safeguard their children from these avoidable dangers.
AB 1949, on the other hand, would make an effort to improve data privacy for children under the age of 18 in California. The language of the bill grants customers in the state the right to know what personal information social media companies gather and sell, and it also offers them the ability to restrict the selling of their children’s data to third parties. In order to make any exceptions, “informed consent” is required, which must come from a parent for children who are younger than 13 years old.
Furthermore, the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) would be strengthened by the passage of AB 1949, which would address loopholes that prevent the data of 17-year-olds from being adequately protected. Individuals under the age of 16 are afforded the most stringent protections under the CCPA.
Wicks, a Democrat from Oakland, commented that “this bill is a crucial step in our work to close the gaps in our privacy laws that have allowed tech giants to exploit and monetize our kids’ sensitive data with impunity.” Wicks is a member of the Democratic Party.
A hearing on the topic of children’s internet safety is scheduled to take place on Wednesday in the United States Senate, and it is possible that the legislation will be timed to coincide with the hearing. A coalition of forty-one states, including California, filed a lawsuit against Meta in October, alleging that the company was detrimental to the mental health of children. Tweens were defined as “a valuable but untapped audience” in documents that were internal to Meta, which was Facebook at the time, according to a study that was published in the Wall Street Journal in 2021.