Finally, California families who have lost a child or injured a child due to social media will see some changes in the dangerous landscape of online harm.

Governor Gavin Newsom recently signed Senate Bill 976 by Senator Nancy Skinner, which prohibits online platforms from knowingly providing addictive feeds to minors without parental consent. The law also prohibits social media platforms from sending notifications to minors during school hours and late at night – from midnight to 6 a.m. – while they are sleeping.

Starting January 1, 2027, social media companies will be required to know the age of their users and implement the requirements under SB 976, making children much safer on social media.

This law will save countless lives here in California, like our forever 16-year-old son Sammy, who had a drug dealer driven to him by the algorithms on Snapchat, delivering him a lethal dose of fentanyl like a pizza, after we were in sleep. This law will help prevent dangerous content from entering our homes through our children’s devices, help our children pay better attention in school and sleep more at night.

Though SB 976, like California’s Age-Appropriate Design Code Act passed two years ago, will certainly be challenged by the powerful lobbying groups funded by tech companies. It can hang on the right for years.

Challenges to the law will likely be along the lines of a violation of the First Amendment or the oft-cited Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which essentially treats the Internet like a blackboard. You can’t sue a blackboard for what someone writes on it, but the Internet is far from the blackboard it may have seemed like in 1996.

A recent ruling by the 3rd US Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that artificial intelligence and the algorithms they power are not human speech and therefore not protected by the Constitution. It’s time for Congress to amend Section 230 and treat the social media industry like any other industry in our country, allowing parents like me to sue for negligence when our children die with the help of repeated social media posts that cause harm or push them towards illegal activities.

Harms such as suicide attempts, human trafficking, dangerous challenges such as the “choking game,” and the sale of drugs and firearms to minors will be minimized on social media thanks to SB 976, ultimately making California safer for our youth.

Its necessary sister bill, Assembly Bill 3216, authored by Assemblymember Josh Hoover and three others, was also just signed by our Governor. School districts will be required to adopt a policy by July 1, 2026, to limit or ban phones on school campuses, except in emergencies or with teacher permission as part of a lesson plan.

Smartphones are becoming an addiction for many children. They check them incessantly, fiddle with them in class when the teachers aren’t looking, and easily miss important information. Grades may even improve as attention spans return to normal.

Overall, we can hope that students will be more focused in school, learning more and feeling less anxious.

California has long been a leader in technology, but that has also been home to companies that have helped create these dangers. Now the state can take the lead in cleaning up the mess we’ve made and help prevent other families from feeling the endless grief we feel over the loss of our son.

Let’s hope these protection measures work across the country. Hopefully, as we say here, as California goes, so goes the nation.

Chapman is the CEO of Parent Collective Inc, which advocates for social media safety for children and education and activism in the fentanyl crisis.