Today’s case has been compared to the legal fight against “big tobacco” in the 20th century.<\/p>\n
Philip Morris and R.J. Reynolds, massive American tobacco firms, were accused of hiding information about the harms of cigarettes.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The companies reached a $206bn master settlement with more than 40 US states in 1998 that led to an agreement to stop marketing to minors, according to the New York Times.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Strict tobacco regulations and a decline in smoking followed.<\/p>\n
Why more victories may be needed for change<\/p>\n
Though today’s verdict is a start, legal experts, also quoted by the NY Times, think there is a “long road ahead” in terms of achieving similar change to protect the young from social media.<\/p>\n
“This decision is quite significant,” said Clay Calvert, a nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a centre-right thinktank, and expert on media law.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He added more legal wins might be needed to force big tech and social media giants to change.<\/p>\n
Calvert told the NY Times: “If there are a series of verdicts for plaintiffs, it will force the defendants to reconsider how they design social media platforms and how they deliver content to minors.”<\/p>\n
And we could get those extra wins – more than 1,600 plaintiffs, including over 350 families and over 250 school districts, accuse the companies of designing addictive products that have harmed young users.<\/p>\n
However, Meta and Google have both already indicated they will appeal against today’s outcome.<\/p>\n
Could UK and US follow growing global trend?<\/p>\n
As we touched on earlier in our 19.07 post about growing calls in the UK for an under-16s social media ban, there is mounting concern in countries around the world about online harms.<\/p>\n
Australia brought in its ban in December.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Watch: How Aussie teens are coping with ban<\/p>\n
Malaysia, Spain and Denmark are considering similar rules.<\/p>\n
In 2024, the US Surgeon General called for adding warning labels to social media explaining that the platforms were associated with mental health harms for adolescents, according to the NY Times.<\/p>\n
But most efforts to regulate social media in the US have, so far, failed, the NY Times points out.<\/p>\n
So, as Calvert says above, it may be that more legal battles need to go the way of social media’s sceptics.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Today’s case has been compared to the legal fight against “big tobacco” in the 20th century. Philip Morris…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":495440,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":{"0":"post-495439","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/495439","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=495439"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/495439\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/495440"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=495439"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=495439"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=495439"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}