California doubles down on online child safety with 13 new bills

California Governor Gavin Newsom signed 13 online child safety bills on or around this date, creating some of the strongest regulations on AI chatbots and social media platforms in the United States. The package includes mandatory age verification when creating accounts, two-hour app time limits for minors, nighttime blocks from midnight to 6 a.m., removal of like counts, and muted push notifications during school hours. One measure penalizes social media platforms up to one million dollars per affected child for negligent harm caused to children; Meta is set to pay 17.1 billion dollars in penalties over 10 years and make major changes to Instagram and Facebook.

Penalties imposed after harm has occurred address accountability but do not intercept abuse before a child is damaged. Guardii's anti-sextortion and anti-grooming modules detect coercion, escalation and predatory patterns in direct messages as they develop, flagging a conversation based on its shape and seriousness rather than handing anyone a feed of private speech. This allows platforms, parents or schools to intervene at the moment a child is in crisis, whether the threat is a stranger or someone known to the victim, and regardless of which messaging channel an offender chooses.