Starting in July 2024, California will be placing stricter guidelines on businesses that provide an online service to minors. AB 2273, which aims to protect minors online from data collection and privacy breaches, was unanimously passed by California legislators in August and was signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom the following month.

So what does AB 2273 do to protect minors?

Sites under the bill will have to “estimate the age of child users with a reasonable level of certainty” to establish a higher degree of safety and privacy online. Sites will also be limited from using minors’ personal information and collecting geolocation data unless “strictly necessary.”

Violators of AB 2273 can be fined no more than $2,500 per affected child for each negligent violation and no more than $7,500 per affected child for each intentional violation.

Legislators in the past have had a difficult time regulating tech outreach. Many businesses have poured large amounts of money into lobbying to maintain the ability to collect data. 

In the 6th quarter of the 2021-22 session, Amazon spent $211,124 lobbying the California legislature, including on AB2273. 

This outreach has resulted in increased concern over minors’ safety online. In 2019, 81 percent of voters said they wanted to prohibit companies from collecting personal information about children without parental consent, but minors themselves are less concerned about data collection.

According to a poll conducted by the Granite Bay Gazette of 201 GBHS students, 91% of respondents agree or strongly agree that social media and tech companies are collecting their data or invading their privacy. Despite this overwhelming agreement, 68% of respondents would not or were unsure if they would stop using a social media or tech company’s product if they knew it was invading their privacy.

“I don’t feel unsafe online under most circumstances. Obviously, there are harmful people online but if you take the right precautions then it’s not too much of an issue,” junior Jada Stansberry said. “If YouTube is collecting my data I won’t have an issue, but if it’s something like Twitter I can just delete that.”

Social media and the internet are becoming increasingly crucial to daily life, which means minors can be willing to overlook some data collection for convenience.

Junior Gemma Wu says that her opposition to data collection “depends on the quality of the product.”

“If it benefits me then I’m fine with it, but I’d only want certain data collected. No address. No phone number,” Wu said.

Many of those impacted by AB 2273 are apathetic to its changes, but there are other challenges to childproofing the internet. 

Dylan Hoffman is the Executive Director for California and the Southwest of TechNet, a national, bipartisan network that promotes innovation. Technet’s position on AB 2273 prior to its signing was that it opposed the bill unless it was amended. 

Some of Technet’s proposed amendments like establishing a strong enforcement mechanism and clearing up ambiguous language in the bill were implemented, but there were still outstanding requests that were not addressed when the bill was signed.

“We’re not trying to stop this bill, we’re trying to make sure that we’re able to implement it,” Hoffman said. “In our view, the best bill that protects kids is one that our companies are able to implement. If we can’t comply with it (AB 2273) isn’t actually serving its purpose.”

Enforcing the bill would have a variety of roadblocks. Primarily, there isn’t a perfect system to establish a user’s age. A system that asks for personal details could easily be usurped if the user lies. Asking for more in-depth information could raise additional problems and defeat the purpose of preventing the collection of minor’s data.

Eric Goldman is the Associate Dean for research and a professor at Santa Clara University School of Law. He says that AB 2273 goes against what most Californians want.

“Age insurance is really not a good process. In fact, it will discourage people from using the internet,” Goldman said. “It’s going to affect all the users on the internet, both adults and children. And it’s going to discourage them from using the internet, as well as likely lead to some services refusing to deal with children.”

Facial detection isn’t an ideal fix either. The technology can be difficult to implement, potentially expensive and it is not always accurate.

Goldman says that the unanimous acceptance of AB 2273 has more to do with the wording and framing of the bill than its policy.

“When a bill is framed as protecting children online, legislators just give it the benefit of the doubt, they assume that the bill will actually do what it promises to do without asking the tough questions that need to be asked,” Goldman said. “Bill sponsors didn’t encourage and in fact, functionally restricted the ability of critics to have a voice in the process. You’d want to see hearings with a wide range of experts, including critics, and none of that happened.”

While reactions to AB 2273 have ranged from enthusiastic to apathetic to critical, its objective, protecting minors online, is undeniably important. But how California gets to that objective remains unclear. It comes down to the question of how much the internet should be regulated.

“I think we should be very cautious about what the government is forcing companies to say or not say, or how to exercise some of their editorial judgment of how they present content,” Hoffman said. “It is a very difficult thing to do at scale to make sure that we’re eliminating to the greatest extent possible the amount of harmful content online. But government restrictions on company activities or outright prohibitions on certain types of content should be looked at very skeptically.”