If social media can flip fitness tips into an eating disorder, California law needs to intervene

When the pandemic forced our world to come to a halt in 2020, my then-16-year-old daughter decided to use her time at home to improve her health and stay in shape.

She wasn’t binge-watching TV or endlessly gaming. She was trying to better herself. She wanted what so many young people want: to feel confident, strong and healthy.

But instead of finding positive guidance, she stumbled into a digital trap. She turned to Instagram and TikTok, searching for terms like “workouts,” “healthy eating” and “glow-up.” In return, the platforms served her a stream of dangerous content, like “thinspiration,” videos promoting starvation and harmful, toxic challenges. In just days, her feed was flooded with pro-anorexia posts and extreme diet tips such as how to “stay under 500 calories a day” and disturbing mantras like how to be thin enough to “fit into a baby swing.”

She never searched for this content specifically, but the platforms’ algorithms aggressively pushed it on her.

What happened next was devastating, and a painful example of why we need Assembly Bill 2, an accountability measure currently circulating the state Capitol. She transformed from a vibrant, healthy, athletic teen to someone we didn’t recognize. My daughter began secretly restricting food, exercising obsessively and spiraling into what would become a full-blown eating disorder.

Within three months, she was hospitalized with a dangerously low heart rate. Over the next year, she endured multiple cardiac events, dissociative panic attacks and inpatient stays at hospitals and treatment centers, including one six-month, out-of-state stay that came only after she was airlifted in critical condition.

Sadly, this story is nothing new. The tech giants that operate social media platforms, many of which are based in my backyard, Silicon Valley, are fully aware of the harm their platforms cause. Corporate whistleblowers have revealed internal research proving that 1 in 3 teenage girls reported that Instagram worsened their body image issues. Former U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy pushed for warning labels on social media because youth depression, anxiety, suicidal ideation and self-harm have risen so dramatically as social media use increased.

An estimated 84% of teens use social media regularly. While it can be a tool for connection and learning, right now, it’s too often a weapon of harm. These platforms are designed to be addictive and keep kids scrolling regardless of what they’re seeing.

Big Tech cannot profit off the pain of our children without consequence. 

AB 2 was authored by Assemblymember Josh Lowenthal, a Democrat from Long Beach, and offers a crucial step toward accountability. It strengthens California’s existing negligence laws by adding serious financial penalties — up to $1 million per child harmed — for large social media companies if they’re found liable for harms caused by their platform features. This includes harms that come from a company’s failure to use ordinary care to protect young users, intentional or not.

This legislation will finally force companies to stop designing their platforms to exploit youth vulnerabilities. They’ll be incentivized to implement age-appropriate safety features, time limits, mental health resources and algorithm safeguards that prevent harmful content from being funneled to kids like my daughter.

She nearly lost her life. My daughter missed years of school, friendships and milestones because an algorithm decided that her desire to be “healthy” was an opportunity to push toxic content.

AB 2 can help prevent this from happening to other families. California needs to enact it and send a clear message that our children are more important than a tech giant’s profits.

Editor’s note: A previous version of this commentary misstated the organization the author volunteers for.