Part of our Responsible Tech Voices series, featuring leaders from All Tech Is Human’s 2026 Responsible Tech Guide.
Filmmaker, advocate, mother of four, and California's First Partner, Jennifer Siebel Newsom has spent her career examining how media shapes young people. As cofounder of the California Partners Project, she treats gender equity and child well-being as a single challenge, and she's pushing for technology that builds safety in from the start.
How did you get here?
Throughout my career, I have always centered social impact efforts. From starting at Conservation International after college, to pursuing filmmaking, to beginning my role as California’s First Partner – my goal has been to make the world a place where everyone can thrive, especially women and children.
When I was pregnant with my first child, a daughter, I started thinking about the messages she would absorb about her worth, so I stepped behind the camera to make Miss Representation and later founded The Representation Project.
Years later, as First Partner and a mom of four, I saw technology reshaping childhood in my own home, and in 2020 I co-founded the California Partners Project with Olivia Morgan to treat gender equity and child well-being as a single problem, because decisions made in boardrooms and product teams shape what kids and families experience.
Now, with three teenagers of my own, I've made young people's voices central to the work. This year, more than 1,000 California teens told us in our Belonging in a Digital Age: Teens, Tech, & Third Places research that they want more places to connect in person. In partnership with #HalfTheStory, my office launched California's first Teen Tech Council so teens have a real voice in state decisions about technology and AI.
The throughline of my career has been the media's effect on young people's mental health. My advice is to listen first to the people most affected, because teens and parents often know what they need before policymakers do. Use every tool you have, from storytelling to research to policy. And bring industry, government, and families to the same table, because no single sector can solve this alone.
What fields intersect in your work?
My work sits where gender equity, child well-being, and technology meet, and I've learned they can't be separated. I started in documentary film, and storytelling and media literacy remain levers for everything I do. Today, some of the biggest forces shaping kids' lives are product design decisions, so my work increasingly intersects with Trust & Safety, AI policy, and state legislation. Image-based abuse and deepfakes are a form of gender-based violence, which is why I lead the California Innovation Council's work on child online safety and countering image-based abuse. As First Partner of California, I recognize that we have a responsibility and an urgent need to balance innovation with safeguards for women and children.
But protecting kids online is only half the work. The other half is social health: belonging and real-world connection. That's why I've championed antidotes to endless scrolling, from expanding young people's access to state parks and libraries to getting kids moving and outdoors. This year, I launched California Love, California Strong, a statewide initiative to fight loneliness through libraries, service, and community. In a digital world, belonging has to be built on purpose.
What's one action you'd like to see?
I'd like to see us stop making children and their parents the last line of defense. No parent should have to outsmart an algorithm to keep their child safe. The action I want is simple: make safety the default, baked into design rather than left to parents to manage.
California is showing it can be done. Over the past two years, the Governor has signed laws requiring social media warning labels, age verification signals from app stores and operating systems, and safeguards on AI companion chatbots. This year, he signed Adam's Law, which requires independent child safety audits for companion chatbots, along with a ban on addictive features like autoplay and algorithmic feeds for kids under 16. Now that standard needs to reach every product meeting, not just the legislature.
When technology stops competing for our children's time, they get it back for what matters most: each other, their communities, and the real world. Our children deserve a childhood that belongs to them.
What does a better tech future look like to you?
A better tech future starts with what young people already want. Technology promises connection, self-expression, identity, and independence, which are exactly the things kids are looking for. In a better future, they get them without paying with their sleep, their confidence, their friendships, or their mental health.
That means technology that helps kids connect with each other instead of replacing real relationships, with safety built into the product so parents aren't left to manage it alone. It means protecting the parts of childhood no app can replace: playing outside, reading books, being bored, and spending time with friends in person.
Most of all, it means treating young people as builders, not just users to be protected. They should help design the technology that will shape their lives.
Learn more about the California Partners Project here. Want more perspectives like this? Read the full Responsible Tech Guide, where this interview was featured.
