Bill Text: CA AB56 | 2025-2026 | Regular Session | Amended

NOTE: There are more recent revisions of this legislation. Read Latest Draft

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Bill Title: Social media: warning labels.

Sponsorship: Partisan Bill (Democrat 8)

Status: (Passed) 2025-10-13 - Chaptered by Secretary of State - Chapter 671, Statutes of 2025. [AB56 Detail]

Download: California-2025-AB56-Amended.html

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Amended  IN  Assembly  February 25, 2025

CALIFORNIA LEGISLATURE— 2025–2026 REGULAR SESSION

Assembly Bill

No. 56

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Introduced by Assembly Member Bauer-Kahan

December 02, 2024

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An act relating to social media. An act to add Chapter 25 (commencing with Section 28000) to Division 20 of the Health and Safety Code, relating to social media platforms.

LEGISLATIVE COUNSEL'S DIGEST

AB 56, as amended, Bauer-Kahan. Social media: warning labels.

Existing law generally regulates social media platforms, including, among other laws, the Protecting Our Kids from Social Media Addiction Act that prohibits an operator of an addictive internet-based service or application, including a social media platform, from providing an addictive feed, as defined, to a minor user, except as prescribed.

This bill would enact the Social Media Warning Law to require a social media platform to display a certain black box warning to a user each day the user initially accesses the social media platform, again after 3 hours of cumulative active use, and thereafter at least once per hour of cumulative active use, as prescribed.

Existing law regulates social media platforms through various acts, including the Cyberbullying Protection Act that requires a social media platform to, among other things and subject to specified exceptions, disclose all cyberbullying reporting procedures in the terms of service, and the Online Violence Prevention Act that requires a social medial platform to, except as specified, clearly and conspicuously state whether it has a mechanism for reporting violent posts that is available to users and nonusers of the platform.

This bill would state the intent of the Legislature to enact legislation relating to mental health warning labels for social media platforms.

Digest Key

Vote: MAJORITY   Appropriation: NO   Fiscal Committee: NO   Local Program: NO  

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Bill Text

The people of the State of California do enact as follows:

SECTION 1.

 The Legislature finds and declares all of the following:

(a) Social media provides an important tool for communication and information sharing. Approximately 95 percent of minor teenagers say that they use at least one social media platform, and more than one-third report using social media almost constantly.

(b) As the United States Surgeon General has reported, recent evidence has identified “reasons for concern” about social media usage by children and adolescents. This evidence includes a study concluding that the risk of poor mental health outcomes doubles for children and adolescents who use social media at least three hours per day and research finding that social media usage is linked to a variety of negative health outcomes, including low self-esteem and disordered eating for adolescent girls.

(c) Further, per the Surgeon General’s Social Media and Youth Mental Health advisory, “excessive and problematic use of social media can harm children and adolescents by disrupting important healthy behaviors. Social media platforms are often designed to maximize user engagement, which has the potential to encourage excessive use and behavioral dysregulation. Push notifications, autoplay, infinite scroll, quantifying and displaying popularity (i.e., ‘likes’), and algorithms that leverage user data to serve content recommendations are some examples of these features that maximize engagement.”

(d) Heavier usage of social media also leads to less healthy sleep patterns and sleep quality, which can in turn exacerbate both physical and mental health problems.

(e) Evidence cited in lawsuits against social media companies for the harms caused against children supports the use of warning labels to advise users of the potential harms of these features. Lawsuits have cited internal documents from companies detailing their deliberate targeting of children in order to bring them on the social media platform and to keep them on the platform. Internal documents have also revealed that social media platforms are aware that their features can impact the health and development of children’s brains and mental health. They understand that children cannot resist some of these features using their underdeveloped discipline and capitalize on this in order to keep them on their platforms.

(f) Both California and the United States as a whole are facing an ongoing youth mental health crisis, with rates of adolescent suicides, depressive episodes, and feelings of sadness and hopelessness on the rise in recent years.

(g) Governments across the globe have effectively employed black box style warnings to educate the public regarding goods that pose a risk of harm to public health.

(h) For these reasons, it is essential that California act to ensure that users, their families, and the public are warned of the risks of social media use, and requiring the display of a black box style warning is an appropriate mechanism for doing so.

SEC. 2.

 Chapter 25 (commencing with Section 28000) is added to Division 20 of the Health and Safety Code, to read:

CHAPTER  25. Social Media Warning Law

28000.

 This chapter shall be known, and may be cited, as the Social Media Warning Law.

28001.

 For purposes of this chapter, “social media platform” means an internet website or internet medium that meets all of the following criteria:

(a) The internet website or internet medium permits a person to become a registered user, establish an account, or create a profile for the purpose of allowing the user to create, share, and view user-generated content through that account or profile.

(b) The internet website or internet medium enables one or more users to generate content that can be viewed by other users of the internet website or internet medium.

(c) The internet website or internet medium primarily serves as a medium for users to interact with content generated by other users of the internet website or internet medium.

28002.

 (a) (1) (A) For each calendar day in which a user uses a social media platform, the social media platform shall display the black box warning described in paragraph (2) to the user when the user initially accesses the social media platform, again after three hours of cumulative active use, and thereafter at least once per hour of cumulative active use.

(B) The black box warning required by this paragraph shall be displayed clearly and continuously for a duration of at least 90 seconds, without providing the ability to bypass or click through the warning, in a manner that is clear and legible and that occupies at between 75 percent and 100 percent of the screen or window that the user is using to access the social media platform.

(2) The black box warning consists of the following text from the United States Surgeon General’s Advisory titled Social Media and Youth Mental Health, published in 2023, displayed clearly, conspicuously, and legibly in black text on a white background:

“The Surgeon General has advised that there are ample indicators that social media can have a profound risk of harm to the mental health and well-being of children and adolescents.”

(b) The provision of the notice required by this section does not waive, release, otherwise limit, or serve as a defense to, any claim, including claims premised on failure to warn, other than a claim premised on a violation of this section.

SECTION 1.

It is the intent of the Legislature to enact legislation relating to mental health warning labels for social media platforms.