California launches teen council for emerging tech, digital wellness

Ah, California. The state that produced the iPhone, the electric car, and a thousand self-aggrandising tech manifestos has now solved artificial intelligence the only way it knows how: by forming a committee. Not just any committee — a Teen Tech Council for 'emerging tech and digital wellness,' because nothing says 'we take existential risk seriously' like asking a group of teenagers to explain to the adults which buttons do what. The Golden State is officially the second state after New York to stand up such a body, and one can almost hear the press release writers patting themselves on the back for their bold, intergenerational leadership.

Let us be perfectly clear about what this council will not do. It will not set binding standards, impose an enforceable age gate on addictive recommendation algorithms, issue fines, pull licences, or compel any company to explain why its product is engineered to hold a fourteen-year-old's thumb in a hypnotic scroll loop until two in the morning. No — it will convene, advise, and eventually produce a report recommending that something be done, sometime, by someone. The 'digital wellness' framing is especially rich in a state where tech giants have spent two decades building engagement engines with roughly the moral restraint of a tobacco executive at a school fete.

Still, credit where it is due: this is technically progress — last century, California's official response to the atomic age was Bert the Turtle, a cartoon turtle who advised children to duck and cover. Today, Bert has been replaced by a Zoom advisory body with quorum requirements, and that is undeniably an upgrade — even if the endpoint looks suspiciously similar. Here is a problem we could regulate, and here is a meeting about maybe considering a conversation regarding it. So by all means, give the kids a seat at the table. It will be educational for them to learn at an early age how enthusiastically democratic institutions capitulate to machines that evolve faster than statutes can be drafted.