California AB 1709

California AB 1709 is the proposed state bill discussed in Would banning teens from social media violate their First Amendment rights?. The episode describes it as a California proposal to ban children under 16 from social media, modeled on an Australia policy and supported across party lines.

In the wiki, AB 1709 is a case of child-safety technology regulation colliding with constitutional speech constraints. Aaron Mackey of the [[ElectronicFrontierFoundation|Electronic Frontier Foundation]] argues that broad bans or parental-consent rules can fail because social media carries lawful speech and because age-verification systems affect adults as well as minors.

Key Claims

• The bill targets social-media access by children under 16 rather than only platform data practices or product features.
• Its policy model is presented as international borrowing from Australia, but its U.S. implementation runs through the United States Constitution.
• The central critique is not that platform harms are imaginary; it is that access bans are overbroad when they cut young people off from lawful speech.
• AB 1709 sits beside Social Media Product Liability but uses a different tool: ex ante access restriction rather than lawsuits over harmful design.

Connections

• California and Australia - jurisdiction and cited policy model.
• Aaron Mackey and [[ElectronicFrontierFoundation|Electronic Frontier Foundation]] - source critic and organization.
• Youth Online Speech Rights and Social Media Age-Gate Speech Burden - constitutional objections raised by the source.
• Comprehensive Consumer Data Privacy and Platform Data Regulation - alternative regulatory path the source favors.
• Social Media Product Liability and Platform First Amendment Defense - adjacent litigation and speech-defense branch.