Historic bill aimed at keeping California children digitally safe approved

California lawmakers passed first-of-its-kind legislation on Monday designed to improve the online safety and privacy protections for children.

The bill, the California Age-Appropriate Design Code Act, will require firms such as TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube to install guardrails for users under the age of 18, including defaulting to higher privacy settings for minors and refraining from collecting location data for those users.

It also requires companies to analyze their algorithms and products to determine how they may affect young users, assessing whether it is designed to be addictive or cause additional harm to children.