According to TechCrunch, New York Governor Kathy Hochul signed a bill this week that will require social media platforms to show warning labels to younger users. The bill, S4505/A5346, passed the state legislature back in June and targets platforms using features like an “addictive feed,” push notifications, autoplay, infinite scroll, and like counts. The warnings must be shown when a young user first encounters these “predatory” features and periodically after, with no option to bypass them. The law frames these warnings similarly to those on tobacco or alcohol, echoing a call from then-Surgeon General Vivek Murthy last year. This follows other recent New York laws requiring parental consent for addictive feeds and data collection from minors.
The new reality for platforms
So here’s the thing: this isn’t just a pop-up you click away. The “periodically thereafter” and “no bypass” clauses are the real teeth here. It means a platform’s core engagement engine—the very thing that makes it sticky and profitable—will now come with a government-mandated health advisory attached. Imagine every time you open TikTok or Instagram, you’re greeted with a label basically saying, “Careful, this thing is designed to be addictive.” That’s a massive shift in how these services are presented. And it directly challenges the fundamental business model of attention-based advertising. If you make the product seem dangerous, will people—or more importantly, their parents—use it less?
A broader regulatory push
Look, this New York law didn’t come out of nowhere. It’s part of a clear, escalating pattern. Last year, the state passed laws around parental consent. California is working on something similar. Governor Hochul just signed an AI safety bill, too. There’s a palpable, bipartisan political momentum to “do something” about tech’s impact on kids, and warning labels are a relatively low-friction, highly visible way to act. They don’t require a complex age-verification system or a massive new enforcement agency. They just force a bit of transparency, or at least, a bit of guilt, onto the user experience. The question is, will it work? Or will it just become background noise, like the unread terms of service?
What happens next
I think the immediate battle will be over definitions and exceptions. The bill says the attorney general can make exceptions if features are used for a “valid purpose unrelated to prolonging use.” That’s a huge loophole waiting to be argued in court. Every platform’s lawyers will now be crafting narratives about how infinite scroll is for “content discovery” and push notifications are for “community safety.” And let’s be real, a state-level law for a global internet is messy. But it creates pressure. If New York and California adopt these rules, it becomes a de facto national standard for major apps. They’re not going to code a special, nagging version just for those states. This feels like the opening salvo in forcing a fundamental redesign of how social media works, moving the Overton window on what’s acceptable. The platforms are on notice: the era of guilt-free infinite scrolling might be coming to an end.
