SACRAMENTO, Calif. – Governor of California. Gavin Newsom pledged Tuesday to severely limit smartphone use during the school day, a dramatic move by the nation’s largest state amid dire warnings from the Biden administration that social media is harming children.
Newsom’s decision, first reported by POLITICO, comes a day after Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy warned that the threat social media poses to children is so acute that Congress should force apps to include warning labels similar to cigarettes and alcohol.
Newsom, one of the key campaign surrogates for President Joe Biden’s reelection effort, said he would work with his Democratic-dominated Legislature to pass the restrictions during the current session, which ends in August.
Newsom and his wife, first partner Jennifer Siebel Newsom, have long warned about the dangers of social media for children, citing studies and claiming that tech companies are blocking efforts to protect them. Newsom wrote a letter last year calls on tech industry to drop lawsuit against the Children’s Online Safety Act he signed into law in 2022.
Three years earlier, he signed legislation encouraging schools to develop policies that limit or completely ban students’ use of smartphones on school grounds during school hours. Tuesday’s announcement would go a step further.
“As the surgeon general confirmed, social media is harming the mental health of our young people,” Newsom told POLITICO. “Building on the legislation I signed in 2019, I look forward to working with the Legislature to limit smartphone use during the school day. When children and teenagers are at school, they should focus on their studies and not on their screens.”
Murthy sounded the alarm in the pages of the New York Times on Monday, as momentum builds in states like California to do more in the face of gridlock in Congress.
Newsom’s announcement is particularly meaningful because it comes from the state that Silicon Valley calls home and from a governor often tied to the tech industry. It also puts him in line with a fierce political rival: Florida’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, whose state last year passed a industry-leading ban on student cell phone use during class.
Both governors are parents of young children. At a conference last month in Los Angeles, Siebel Newsom accused major tech companies of failing to tackle social media addiction and mental health issues among young people. She noted that the industry is trying to thwart the state’s landmark law protecting children’s online privacy and safety, which has been held up by courts.
And Siebel Newsom choked up as she talked about how she and the governor had to pull one of their children out of school because of online bullying.
Indiana and Tennessee also have laws that authorize school districts to restrict cell phone use.
Newsom’s office has not provided details beyond the broader goal he outlined for this year’s session, but a handful of proposals with bipartisan support have worked their way through the California Legislature.
Senator Henry Stern, a Democrat, has proposed a measure that would give school districts the ability to limit students’ use of social media while on campus, and Republican Assemblyman Josh Hoover wants to require school districts to limit smartphones at school or prohibit. locations by 2026.
Some California lawmakers agreed with Murthy’s proposal for a warning label, but said more needs to be done. Democratic Assemblywoman Rebecca Bauer-Kahan, who chairs the privacy committee, told POLITICO she would support California passing its own warning label policy if Congress stalls.
“I think the federal government needs to move beyond this warning,” Bauer-Kahan said. “Here in California, we are going as far as we can in protecting our youth.”
And two other Democratic lawmakers with proposals to curb social media companies’ targeting of children said Murthy’s call to action echoes what experts have been saying for years.
“It is our duty to ensure that these platforms are a safe environment for our children and we will be relentless until we focus on well-being as a collective responsibility,” said Assemblymember Josh Lowenthal, a Democratic lawmaker who is proposing to to hold media companies liable. for harming children.
State Sen. Nancy Skinner said her bill, a first in the country that would require parental consent before companies can send an “addictive” social media feed to minors, would complement Murthy’s proposal.
“A warning label is important, but we also need to provide parents with tools to protect their children from preventable harm,” Skinner said.
Research has shown that mobile phones are a growing problem in schools. Common Sense Media, a leading nonprofit organization for parents and teachers, found that 97 percent of students used their phones during the school day – an average of 43 minutes.
At Naples Village School, a private school in Naples, Florida that instituted its own ban two years ago, there was a reported 94 percent improvement in mental well-being as measured by mental health interventions.
Jim Steyer, the CEO of Common Sense Media, told POLITICO before Newsom’s announcement that he would support legislation in California to place warning labels on social media if Congress does not act.
Steyer, who recently helped pass two online child safety laws in New York, said Murthy’s proposal indicates that momentum is on regulators’ side, even as they deal with “the richest, most powerful companies in the history of the world.”
“I’m cautiously optimistic because it’s a bipartisan issue,” Steyer said. “Every parent knows this is important. And the truth is that these platforms are a very important part of our lives – our entire lives, especially those of our young people. But they need to be regulated. There have to be guardrails, period, period.”
