In San Francisco, a federal appeals court has ruled that thousands of lawsuits accusing Meta, Google, TikTok, and Snapchat of deliberately engineering addictive platforms for young users must proceed to trial. The court drew a careful distinction: Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act offers a legal defense, not a blanket immunity — a difference that may prove consequential not only for these companies, but for the broader question of whether digital platforms bear responsibility for the psychological harm they may knowingly cause. At stake is something older than any algorithm: the du
US appeals court allows thousands of addiction lawsuits against Meta, Google, TikTok to proceed
Young users experienced depression, anxiety, and body-image issues from deliberately addictive social media platform designs targeting children.