California bill would allow parents to sue Big Tech over social media addiction – Washington Examiner

A bill that would allow California parents to sue technology companies over their children becoming addicted to social media has passed a significant milestone.

The Social Media Platform Duty to Children Act passed the state assembly on Monday. This bill, which was submitted in March by state lawmakers, would allow parents to sue companies such as TikTok and Instagram for up to $25,000 if a child is determined to be "addicted" to the app.

If passed into law, social platforms could be considered liable if they "developed, designed, implemented, or maintained features that were known, or should have been known, by the platform to be addictive to child users," the bill reads.

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The bill also adopts a vague definition of addiction. If the bill is passed, then a social media company can be held liable for "addiction" if it "indicates preoccupation or obsession with, or withdrawal or difficulty to cease or reduce use of, a social media platform despite the user's desire to cease or reduce that use" and if it "causes or contributes to physical, mental, emotional, developmental, or material harms to the user."

The bill was introduced on March 15 by state assembly members Buffy Wicks, a Democrat, and Jordan Cunningham, a Republican. The bill was filed with the hope of forcing tech companies to "bear some of the social costs that they put on all of our children," Cunningham said, according to the Wall Street Journal.

While the assembly vote is a significant step forward, the bill will still need to be approved by the state Senate before it becomes law.

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Tech companies and business moguls have criticized the bill and threatened to pull out of the state if it becomes law. If the SMPDC Act passes, then "social media companies and online web services would have no choice but to cease operations for kids under 18 and would implement stringent age-verification in order to ensure that adolescents did not use their sites," the bipartisan organization TechNet told lawmakers in a letter.

Lawmakers have been attempting to restrict the effects of social media on youth for years. The efforts gained considerable attention after Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen went public in October 2021 and spoke publicly about the company's algorithmic effects on teenagers.

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California bill would allow parents to sue Big Tech over social media addiction - Washington Examiner