Last week, a video of Jennifer Siebel Newsom, the wife of California Governor Gavin Newsom, went viral on X. In the clip, filmed at the Common Sense Summit on Kids and Families in May 2025, Siebel Newsom tells the audience that “boys who spend time online are moving a little bit—I’m trying not to be political here—but are moving to the right.”
She described her own son’s curiosity about Andrew Tate, which he had discussed with her Republican father, as “scary.” She said, “We’re working on legislation to hold tech companies accountable, to really provide all the best-in-class resources and support for youth so that they don’t go down this rabbit hole of very, very dangerous and limiting narratives around ultimately what it means to be girl and what it means to be a boy.”
There are good reasons to be concerned about the impact of social media on young people, but Siebel Newsom, despite her attempt not to be political, made clear her problem was with boys “moving to the right,” which is a very different concern from the ones being raised by Jonathan Haidt and others about the impact of social media on childhood.
And Siebel Newsom’s remarks come in the context of efforts by her husband to control and even censor information. In 2023, Newsom announced a state initiative for citizens to report disfavored speech (non-criminal “hate incidents”) they see online.
