Video, Audio, Photos & Rush Transcript: Governor Hochul and Attorney General James Announce Final Safe for Kids Act Rules to Protect Children Online

Earlier today, Governor Kathy Hochul and Attorney General Letitia James announced the release of final rules on how social media companies must restrict addictive features on their platforms to comply with the Stop Addictive Feeds Exploitation (SAFE) for Kids Act and protect children's mental health. New York's pioneering SAFE for Kids Act requires social media companies to restrict algorithmically personalized feeds and nighttime notifications for users under the age of 18 unless they obtain parental consent. Algorithmic feeds and nighttime notifications are tied to depression, anxiety, eating and sleep disorders, and other mental health issues among children and teenagers. The rules released todayestablish criteria to clarify which platforms are subject to the SAFE for Kids requirements and outline standards to determine users' age and obtain parental consent. This announcement furthers Governor Hochul's nation-leading work to restrict addictive feeds, create safeguards against harmful AI companions, ban smartphones in schools, enact social media warning labels, and protect kids from predatory behavior online.

VIDEO: The event is available to stream on YouTube here and TV quality video is available here (h.264, mp4).

AUDIO: The Governor's remarks are available in audio form here.

PHOTOS: The Governor's Flickr page will post photos of the event here.

A rush transcript of the Governor's remarks is available below:

There is music in the back and here we are. We just had a great tour of some students at the STEAM school, which we were reflecting on when I was Lieutenant Governor and saw the original plans for this and it was built in 2017. So it's really been fun to see how they're rethinking education and really engaging kids and planning out their own futures and being stimulated in so many ways where they otherwise would not have been, so I'm really happy to be here.

I want to thank our Attorney General, Tish James, for just being the strong, stalwart bulwark against a lot of things that require toughness and stamina and the ability to do what's right and we're so honored to have you as our Attorney General representing 20 million New Yorkers. Assemblymember Nily Rozic, I've known you for a long time as well and appreciate your commitment to fighting for our children, their mental health and really pushing back on those who say change is not possible, so thank you. Our Borough President, another long time friend, Antonio Reynoso. I thank you for caring so deeply about this borough. You're so passionate about it, and I've admired your leadership for such a long time, so thank you. And we have our Diallo Shabazz, CEO of Brooklyn STEAM. Liz Foley, the Director of Advocacy, Commonsense Media, we've done so much together. And all the parents and students who joined us today to talk about a topic that other states could leave, but guess what? New York is always first and we're proud of that.

When we become aware of problems, we don't just do a lot of hand-wringing, we figure out how we can listen first. This is how I operate. I go around the state, I gather parents and young people and educators and people who care deeply about our children. But that's how I have shaped the state's response to many of the challenges we're facing. And always being the national standard, others look to us for leadership and that's why there's a special responsibility on all of us to get it right. And when we talk about what getting it right looks like in a couple of minutes - we're doing things like finally breaking the grip that cell phones have on our students. Just came out of a classroom - we noted that nobody had a cell phone. I said, "Because you're not allowed to."

After a year of going around the state doing all this convening as I just mentioned, it became so apparent to me that our children's mental health, our teenagers mental health was just in a spiral, a spiral. Pandemic driven partially but the other part was they were captive to all the the negative messaging, the bullying from other students, but also the bombardment of of social media algorithms that they did not ask for - that are just constantly drawing their attention away from being a student or someone who can communicate in person with others.

The human connectivity has been lost in schools and we knew we had to do better. So we stopped the relentless barrage of reels and posts and it's just about one simple premise, like reclaiming a childhood for our kids. Let them have that carefree experience that most of us grew up with. So when I came into office, I said it was a full blown mental health crisis. I did my listening tours and as New York's first mom Governor, it was really sad to see that kids were depressed and suicidal. I went to one grade school and the mental health professional there said that she has appointments with third and fourth graders who are feeling very depressed and anxious all the time and every one of them had had a cell phone in their hands holding them captive. So we proposed the first of its kind laws to shield kids from addictive feeds, and yes, there's a lot of opposition to that. There are a lot of forces that did not want us to take this on, but we said we have to protect them and the corporations lined up against us. Millions of dollars and efforts and lobbying and all the other pressure points that we're so accustomed to - but we built an unstoppable coalition.

When you're on the right side of an issue, it is empowering and we harness that power to spread the message to more around the state and brought - as I said, teenagers and parents and educators and the young people who spoke up about the toxicity of social media. And when it came to the cell phones and what was going on, I'll never forget being in a school library listening to one young woman who said, "Yeah, we can't put down the cell phone." They said, "Yeah just just stop using the cell phone and the social media platform just you can stop." She says, "You have to save us from ourselves because we cannot be the social outcast." The only one, the first one. But we know it's wrong. We know how damaging it is and we see it in our friends and we did take those steps, but it was the voices of the people who stood up and Commonsense Media has been an important partner and our legislators.

In June of 2024, I signed the SAFE for Kids Act. It stands for Stop Addictive Feeds Exploitation, and I want to thank two leaders in our legislature. Assemblymember Nily Rozic who did not give up despite the opposition and her Senate partner, Andrew Gounardes. Two real leaders, two champions and I am always grateful for their support. So we signed that and today we're taking a huge step forward to be implementing that law. And I want to thank the Attorney General for her team and the resources and the time. When you're the first, you know you have to get it right. There's no room for mistakes because the lawyers are lining up to attack and try to defeat you in court. So everything must be litigation proof and the thought process that has to go into it, knowing that the rest of the nation is watching the product of not just the law, but the regulations that actually implement it, which are critically important.

Age confirmation is everything. I'll never forget so many companies tell me we have no way of knowing whether someone's under 18 or not. I said, "You're smart people, use AI to figure it out. Ask how you do it and you're not supposed to allow underage gaming anyhow. Sports betting, so you must have some metric. So don't tell me you can't do it. Figure it out." And making sure that under the age of 18, you cannot be subjected to the addictive algorithms that deliver the harmful content. So under 18, your feed can only include accounts that you follow that you choose. Not sitting there is just a victim of this all bombardment that you actually will have a choice of what you see. No notifications overnight, our young people need to sleep. How many hours of sleep are they getting? And I had nieces go through this and all night long, all night long. I said, "How do you have friends from across the world?" She said, "Oh, they're up at the same time I am," that's because you're up at 3:00 in the morning. You do not have friends across the world.

So we said we talked about that and the Attorney General will talk about how age verification works but here's the bottom line. Social media companies, you're now on notice. The regulations are done, you have 180 days to come into compliance. Once the law takes effect in January, any platform that attempts to bombard our young people with addictive feeds or to monetize their mental health - which is exactly what's going on - we'll face legal action. That's part of a larger mission to rein in big tech. We've also passed laws to protect children's personal data, shielding them from AI chatbots and predators on gaming sites and other platforms. So this is just one element of what we've been doing and it requires us to constantly be vigilant. We think we're ahead of the game right here - another avenue comes up, another site, another tactic. And so we're not done with this, we know that. But these companies who know that this is harmful for their own children and yet for purposes of making the almighty dollar are trying to harm our own kids. We're putting them on notice, just don't go there because you will be stopped in the State of New York under this leadership.

It's also as I mentioned, the smartphone is the other part of the problem. I will just say, I'm so proud of what we accomplished in doing something that I was told cannot happen in the State of New York. There's too many forces against this, Liz knows what I'm talking about. The State Education Department didn't want it, people were anxious. Parents didn't want to have that loss of connection to their students until we told them that law enforcement says the last thing you want your child to be doing, if there's ever a shooting incident or any kind of crisis on campus, is to be having them look for their cell phone or have a cell phone go off during this and revealing your child's location and wrong information is being transmitted to law enforcement.

I thank the law enforcement who stood with us over a year and a half of persuading parents that your child is safer without this during a crisis. So it's been amazing. Finally, we're seeing kids be lighthearted, laughing, making friends, playing games. Kids playing chess and checkers and just bringing Polaroid cameras, which I didn't know anybody knew what they were anymore. But they still want pictures of their friends and so it's really heartwarming to see what's happening in classrooms now. And I'm sorry it took a decade before any leader stepped up and said, this is wrong and this should not be happening.

Our data shows great success and lastly, I'll just say this just to show how far we've come in New York - seizing this issue aggressively. New York State was ranked number one in the nation by the Anxious Generation movement for keeping kids safe online. Now, they say we're also tied with Utah. Okay, we're tied with Utah, too - but number one, the largest state for sure that did this.

And I hope other states follow, I hope they follow through with the cell phone ban and I hope they follow with every single thing that the Attorney General is going to talk about, because our kids are looking to us as the adults to save them from themselves. And we're responding, yes, we will.