Google, Meta and TikTok on Thursday sued to block a new California law that restricts social media companies from offering features to children that could be addictive.
The law, signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom in September, prohibits companies from offering features like autoplay videos and personalized recommendations to users under the age of 16. The tech companies’ lawsuits, filed in separate federal courts in California, are the first major challenges to the law.
The companies said the law restricted their free speech rights and violated Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, a federal law that gives tech companies a shield against liability for content posted by users.
Social media companies are battling a flood of claims that their services are addictive to children. In March, Meta and YouTube lost a Los Angeles case brought by a young woman who said she had become addicted to their services, and were ordered to pay her $6 million in damages. Last month, Meta settled a similar lawsuit by an 18-year-old Mississippi woman who had also secured settlements with TikTok and YouTube.
California’s new law, which is set to go into effect in January, says features like personalized recommendations can be “psychologically exploitative” for minors and cause them to check social media compulsively. It would require companies to prevent access to such features for users under 16 and fine those that did not comply.
The law would allow the government to “dictate how ideas are organized, displayed or shared with Californians,” said Edward Patterson, a Meta spokesman. It would also undercut Meta’s ability to recommend age-appropriate content to children, he added, and force the company to remove features designed to deliver age-appropriate content.
Google said it already restricted some features for minors on YouTube, preventing videos from automatically playing on children’s accounts and allowing parents to disable its short-form video feed, Shorts.
“We believe parents are best positioned to make the right decisions for their families, which is why we offer a range of protections and tools that put parents in control,” said José Castañeda, a Google spokesman.
TikTok did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In its lawsuit, the company said that it exercised “editorial discretion” over which videos to show to users and that the law would restrict its free speech.
Proponents of the law said tech companies were protecting their bottom line, not the First Amendment.
“Meta, Google and TikTok’s business models rely on keeping kids and teens scrolling, and now they’re claiming that protecting those features is a matter of free speech,” said Brooke Istook, the chief executive of the Heat Initiative, an advocacy organization focused on tech accountability. “What’s really at stake is their ability to keep profiting from addictive designs that put kids at risk every day.”
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