The California Age-Appropriate Design Code Act (CAADCA) was signed into law in 2022 and was put into effect in July 2024. Under the law, businesses that “create goods, services, or product features likely to be accessed by children” must “comply with specified standards, including considering the best interests of children.” The regulations imposed under CAADCA require businesses to estimate user age, enforce higher default privacy settings, and prohibit the sale of any information related to a minor. The law was designed to mitigate the impacts of targeted advertising aimed at children and protect children’s personal information.
Targeted advertising directed toward children has been an incredibly lucrative revenue stream for businesses in recent years. It works by collecting user information like location, age, and searches to then tailor ads and feeds to users based on those factors. Platforms like YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok are addictive in nature and bring in millions of minor users per year. A study conducted in 2022 found that “YouTube had 49.7 million U.S.-based users under age 18; TikTok, 18.9 million; Snapchat, 18 million; Instagram, 16.7 million; Facebook, 9.9 million; and X, 7 million.” Compounding this, YouTube gained $959.1 million in ad revenue from children aged 12 and under, whilst Instagram gained $4 billion from their 13-17 age demographic alone in 2022. The significant revenue gained from obtaining minors’ user data sparked an interest in regulation among legislators and children’s advocacy groups, which led to CAADCA’s introduction and passage in 2022.
Arguments in Favor of CAADCA
One of the primary arguments supporting CAADCA is the mental health benefits that can arise from its implementation. Targeted advertising allows companies to piece together users’ identities, insecurities, and purchasing behaviors. For children, this can lead to fears of missing out on the latest deal or comparisons to the influencers that popped up on their feed last week. Furthermore, it can influence how young users view the world, as most use social media to stay informed of current events. Taken together, the overwhelming and comparison-inducing nature of user-tailored social media algorithms has been shown to correlate with increases in suicidal thoughts, anxiety, and eating disorders among minor users. Advocates suggest that these adverse outcomes are in part due to minors’ lack of knowledge and skills for halting constant use of these addictive platforms.
Supporters of CAADCA also praise the higher default privacy settings that it requires businesses to enact for children on social media platforms. Advocates say this provision is especially important since public social media profiles can present dangers for children. Research shows that social media can negatively affect adolescents via exposure to child predators, cyberbullying, and unrealistic expectations for their appearances or lives in general. These influences come at a time when their brains are most vulnerable to these negative stimuli. By enacting a greater level of privacy settings, children are safer from those factors that so many fear when being online.
CAADCA also provides the benefit of an extra safeguard against data breaches, as it does not allow for the “collecting, selling, sharing, or retaining of any personal or geolocation information” for minors. Businesses are required to run Data Protection Impact Assessments or “DPIAs” to ensure their compliance with the set security parameters. Minors are also given protection from any third parties that may be trying to steal their information through these assessments. DPIAs are conducted biannually and are required immediately if a new product or service is introduced in the interim. Giving children the extra safety net against data breaches is vital in the evolving, dangerous technological world, which gives more merit to CAADCA’s policies.
Arguments in Opposition to CAADCA
Critics of CAADCA warn that the law risks infringing minors’ First Amendment rights by limiting the public settings on their social media accounts. They see the law’s privacy provisions as a form of state censorship rather than necessary safety measures. Legal challenges to the Act highlight burdens being placed on individuals’ online speech, as well as restricting social media platforms’ editorial discretion. This could limit children’s access to mental health resources, issues such as climate change, or conflicts happening across the world. It could also allow for direct control over what they are allowed to learn in their youth, which takes away the trial and error present in that phase of life.
In addition to the First Amendment concerns, CAADCA has been criticized for vague, wide-reaching definitions that might be difficult to comply with. Within its regulations, CAADCA includes phrases such as “likely to be accessed by children” or “with a reasonable level of certainty.” These terms are unclear to businesses since there is no standardized way of measuring a reasonable degree of regulation. This is a key issue for the law, as it forces businesses to self-censor in hopes of avoiding the extreme penalties of not complying— $2500 to $7500 per child, depending on the type of violation. Therefore, critics contend that the requirements of the act must be made clearer so businesses can avoid the harsh consequences of noncompliance.
Future Directions
As CAADCA begins its first few years of implementation in the state of California, it is likely to have wide implications for how children are regulated online in America. States like Nebraska and Vermont are enacting similar policies to protect their minors’ online information as well. Depending on the success of these state-level regulations, a federal bill on age-appropriate design code could be introduced in the coming years. For businesses, the spread of age-appropriate design regulations could spark a need to reinvent their internal structures, especially as they navigate the patchwork of state-level regulations that exists today.
These policies are also the start of a new era for child protection laws as a whole. The previous protection policy for children was the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Rule, a federal law enacted in 1998 that imposed requirements on online platforms directed to children aged 13 or younger. This holds relevance for contemporary online safety policies because many are aimed at all children under the age of 18 rather than the more strict under-13 demographic. It has been reported that federal and state officials are looking to increase the threshold to age 18 to counter the negative impacts of social media use for the 14 to 17-year-olds who are currently unprotected.
Conclusion
With its passage in 2022, CAADCA marked a new frontier in online protections for minors. Supporters view it as a necessary safeguard against the exploitation of minors’ personal information and the mental health risks linked to algorithm-driven platforms, while critics warn that its vague language and potential restrictions on expression could threaten First Amendment rights and create compliance challenges for businesses. As similar policies emerge in other states, CAADCA may serve as a model for nationwide legislation redefining children’s digital protections—ushering in both a new era of accountability for technology companies and continued debate on the balance between free speech and online safety.