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Meta Must Face US State Lawsuits over Teen Social Media Addiction

A man walks past a logo of mobile application Instagram, during a conference in Mumbai, India, September 20, 2023. (Reuters)
A man walks past a logo of mobile application Instagram, during a conference in Mumbai, India, September 20, 2023. (Reuters)
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Meta Must Face US State Lawsuits over Teen Social Media Addiction

A man walks past a logo of mobile application Instagram, during a conference in Mumbai, India, September 20, 2023. (Reuters)
A man walks past a logo of mobile application Instagram, during a conference in Mumbai, India, September 20, 2023. (Reuters)

Facebook parent company Meta must face lawsuits by US states accusing it of fueling mental health problems among teens by making its Facebook and Instagram platforms addictive, a federal judge in California ruled on Tuesday.

Oakland-based US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers rejected Meta's bid to toss the claims made by the states in two separate lawsuits filed last year, one involving more than 30 states including California and New York and the other brought by Florida.

Rogers put some limits on the states' claims, agreeing with Meta that a federal law known as Section 230 regulating online platforms partly shielded the company. However, she found that the states had put forward enough detail about allegedly misleading statements made by the company to go forward with most of their case.

The judge also rejected motions by Meta, ByteDance's TikTok, Google parent Alphabet's YouTube and Snap's SnapChat to dismiss related personal injury lawsuits by individual plaintiffs. The other companies are not defendants to the states' lawsuits.

The ruling clears the way for states and other plaintiffs to seek more evidence and potentially go to trial. It is not a final ruling on the merits of their cases.

"Meta needs to be held accountable for the very real harm it has inflicted on children here in California and across the country," California Attorney General Rob Bonta said in a statement.

Lawyers for the personal injury plaintiffs in a joint statement called the ruling "a significant victory for young people nationwide who have been negatively impacted by addictive and harmful social media platforms."

A Meta spokesperson says that the company disagreed with the ruling overall and that it had "developed numerous tools to support parents and teens," including new "Teen Accounts" on Instagram with added protections.

A Google spokesperson called the allegations "simply not true" and said, "providing young people with a safer, healthier experience has always been core to our work."

The other social media companies did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The states are seeking court orders against Meta's allegedly illegal business practices and are seeking unspecified monetary damages.

Hundreds of lawsuits have been filed by various plaintiffs accusing the social media companies of designing addictive algorithms that lead to anxiety, depression and body-image issues among adolescents, and failing to warn of their risks.

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Technology

PlayStation at 30: How Sony's Grey Box Conquered Gaming

The little grey box sold 102 million units. Richard A. Brooks / AFP
The little grey box sold 102 million units. Richard A. Brooks / AFP
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PlayStation at 30: How Sony's Grey Box Conquered Gaming

The little grey box sold 102 million units. Richard A. Brooks / AFP
The little grey box sold 102 million units. Richard A. Brooks / AFP

Japanese electronics giant Sony is set to celebrate 30 years since it launched the PlayStation console, the little grey box that catapulted the firm into the gaming big league.
PlayStation was Sony's first foray into the world of video games and when it hit the shelves in Japan on December 3, 1994, the company needed to sell one million units to cover its costs, AFP said.
In the end, the gadget became a legend, selling more than 102 million units, helping to launch many of the industry's best-loved franchises and positioning Sony as a heavyweight in a hugely lucrative sector.
"PlayStation changed the history of video games," said Hiroyuki Maeda, a Japanese specialist in video game history.
"It truly transformed everything: hardware, software, distribution and marketing."
One of the keys to its success was broadening the appeal of a pastime that had often been dismissed as a hobby for children.
From the off, the firm was clear that it wanted to trash this image.
In part this stems from Sony's rivalry with Nintendo, which was already a dominant player in the sector by the mid-1990s, but whose games skewed young.
Sony 'humiliated'
The original PlayStation can trace its history to a falling out between the two great Japanese firms.
They had partnered in the late 1980s to develop a version of the Super Nintendo console with an in-built CD player.
But Nintendo suspected Sony were using the project as a way to muscle into the gaming sector and abruptly cancelled the partnership in 1991.
"Sony found itself in a humiliating position," said Maeda, so pushed ahead with the project by itself.
The hardware proved to be revolutionary, CD-ROMs being cheaper and storing much more data than the cartridges used by Nintendo and other consoles.
And to further distinguish itself from Nintendo, Sony courted a young adult audience with fighting games like "Tekken", out-and-out horror with "Resident Evil" and "Silent Hill", and military titles like "Metal Gear Solid".
Its advertising also followed a more grown-up path.
Hollywood auteur David Lynch was drafted in to direct ads for the PS2 launched in 2000 -- conjuring a nightmare vision of floating heads and talking ducks certainly not meant for younger audiences.
"The older audience obviously had better purchasing power than children," said Philippe Dubois, founder of M05, a French association that aims to preserve digital heritage.
The PS2 is still the most successful console in history, having sold more than 160 million units.
'New sensations'
Over the past 30 years, the competition has intensified and the technology has been honed.
While Sega and other rivals have fallen by the wayside, Microsoft has entered the fray with its Xbox, and Nintendo is still on the scene with its Switch console.
But the industry is enduring tough times.
A surge in popularity and investment during the pandemic has subsided and Sony's PlayStation division recently laid off hundreds of workers.
Plenty of analysts are also predicting that cloud gaming will soon render consoles obsolete.
Sony appears undaunted though, recently launching an upgraded version of its PS5 with a marketing push that highlighted new AI features.
Bloomberg has reported that the Japanese firm is also planning a new hand-held version of the PlayStation, which would once again pit it against old rival Nintendo, undisputed king of portable devices.
However, for the purists, few innovations were as great as the original console's ability to handle 3D graphics.
The technology was instrumental for the appeal of classic games such as "Tomb Raider" and "Final Fantasy VII".
"We discovered sensations, emotions that we hadn't experienced with earlier consoles," said French YouTuber and PlayStation enthusiast Cyril 2.0.
He said he had collected almost every title released for the PlayStation in Europe -- some 1,400 -- and insisted the formula for success was not complicated.
"For consoles, games are still the most important thing," he said.