The judge struck notification and disclosure requirements, and kept the rest of the law intact.
A federal court has prohibited two provisions of a California law protecting children from social media addiction from coming into effect, allowing partial enforcement of the new statute.
The bill, SB 976, “Protecting Our Kids from Social Media Addiction Act,” was signed into law by Gov. Gavin Newsom in September. It prohibits social media companies from offering addictive feeds to minors without parental consent.
In November, NetChoice, a trade association of internet companies, filed a lawsuit against the bill, accusing the state of “attempting to unconstitutionally regulate minors’ access to protected online speech—impairing adults’ access along the way.”
It asked for an injunction blocking the implementation of the law, which was set to take effect on Jan. 1, 2025.
Members of NetChoice include Google, Facebook owner Meta, Pinterest, Snapchat owner Snap Inc., X, and Amazon, among others.
On Dec. 31, Judge Edward J. Davila from the U.S. District Court, Northern District of California, San Jose Division, issued a judgment upholding most of SB 976 except for two provisions—a notification requirement and a disclosure requirement.
The notification provision bans social media platforms from sending alerts to minors during school hours and between midnight and 6 a.m. on school days.
The motivation behind this provision “seems to be a concern that notifications will distract minors from school or interrupt their sleep,” the judge said. If that’s the case, he said, all notifications, not just those from social media platforms, should be banned during those hours.
For instance, ESPN can send notifications of a game’s results to minors during prohibited hours while Facebook cannot. Both these alerts are “capable of causing distractions or sleep disruptions,” the judge said.
The disclosure provision requires social media companies to publicly reveal certain information, including the number of minors using their service and the number of minors who received parental consent to access feeds.
“The Court sees no reason why revealing to the public the number of minors using social media platforms would reduce minors’ overall use of social media and associated harms,” the judge wrote.
