California Governor Signs Bills Expanding CSAM Sanctions to AI-Generated Content and Restricting Addictive Social Media Features for Minors

California Governor Gavin Newsom signed into law on September 10, 2026 a package of thirteen bills designed to safeguard young people from technology-related harms. Two headline measures bar children under 16 from exposure to behaviorally addictive features on social media platforms and ban toys containing AI companion chatbots. Another measure in the package expanded the scope of criminal sanctions against child sexual abuse material to include any digitally altered or AI-generated content depicting a person under eighteen engaged in sexual conduct.

Restricting features and criminalising content are both necessary, but neither intercepts harm at the point of contact. A child removed from an addictive feed can still receive a grooming message in a direct-message thread; expanded CSAM statutes still require law enforcement to discover the exchange after it has occurred. Anti-grooming and anti-CSAM detection operating in the direct-message layer across platforms blocks the approach before it reaches the child, identifies the coercion and escalation that precede material exchange, and surfaces the threat to a parent or safeguarding authority in real time. Guardii, backed by Startmate, deploys that capability on Instagram, Snapchat, Discord, Roblox and other platforms, addressing the underlying contact harm that feature restrictions and criminal statutes alone cannot prevent.