California Age-Appropriate Design Code takes effect with new child safety mandates

California's Age-Appropriate Design Code Act took effect on 30 September 2024, mandating that online platforms likely to be accessed by children under 18 configure privacy settings to high protection by default, conduct data protection impact assessments for features that pose heightened risk of harm to minors, and avoid using children's personal information in ways that are detrimental to their wellbeing. The law requires platforms to estimate the age of users with reasonable certainty and applies to any business providing online services, products or features likely to be accessed by California children, with enforcement by the state Attorney General and potential civil penalties.

Age estimation and default privacy settings reduce some data risks but do not intercept predatory contact or prevent exploitation once a child is engaged in conversation. Pattern-based detection that identifies grooming behaviours, coercion, escalation and CSAM sharing in direct messages addresses the substantive harms to wellbeing the California law seeks to prevent, surfacing high-risk exchanges to parents or authorities at the point where intervention can still protect the child. Guardii operates in real time across Instagram, Snapchat, Discord and Roblox with modules for grooming, sextortion, AI-generated CSAM and cyberbullying, reporting the structure and severity of a conversation without exposing its content and enabling rapid escalation to the right authority when a young person is in crisis or acute danger.