US court verdict against Meta, YouTube is a reminder. Protecting children from internet needs more than screen-time control. Online world appears natural to the young. They must be trained to be suspicious of it
A jury in California, recently, did something courts rarely do: it looked at the internet, and saw, not a medium, but a machine. It found Meta and YouTube negligent – holding that infinite scroll and algorithmic recommendation were not harmless conveniences, but engineered compulsions that harmed young users’ mental health. The damages were modest. The meaning was not.