Parents push for legislative action after Meta court ruling: ‘Phones should be illegal for kids until they’re 18!’ | Latest Tech News

Parents are determined for help to defend their kids from dangerous social media platforms following two bombshell court rulings last week that fined the tech giant Meta with penalties in the thousands and thousands.  

“Ninety-five percent of our kids are using these products that we know are harmful,” Julie Frumin, a 43-year-old mom of two from Westlake Village, north of Los Angeles, fumed to The Post. “We need help. Help us!” 

But others finally see more than a glimmer of hope in the wake of the circumstances. 

Deb Schmill, founding member of ParentsSOS, helped craft laws for phone-free colleges in Massachusetts. Her daughter, Rebecca (Becca) Mann Schmill, was 18 when she died of fentanyl poisoning from medicine she bought through a social media platform. 

Sarah Gardner (middle), founder and CEO of tech research group Heat Initiative, celebrates the court determination. Parents are still in search of extra help from lawmakers. Andy Johnstone for CA Post

Schmill told The Post that the court victories are a “watershed moment,” proclaiming that they “are a major first step toward ending one of the most shameful public health failures in modern American history.” 

On Tuesday, a jury in New Mexico ruled that Meta, which owns Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp, prioritized income over security, misled customers, and failed to defend kids from inappropriate predators. The jury ordered Meta to pay $375 million in civil penalties to 37,500 customers, the utmost penalty allowed in the state. 

The tech company denies any wrongdoing and plans to appeal the verdict.  

The next day, a jury in Los Angeles sided with a 20-year-old lady, identified only by her first identify Kaley, who had accused Meta’s Instagram and Google’s YouTube of making her addicted to their apps through options like scrolling and autoplay. Meta is now liable for $4.2 million in damages, and Google for $1.8 million. 

Stone-faced Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg leaves the LA courtroom after testifying last month. AP

Both Meta and YouTube insist that their platforms are protected for kids — but tech firms are dealing with more lawsuits all over the nation. 

When Frumin, a licensed marriage and household therapist, heard the verdicts, she shed tears of pleasure. 

“It’s long overdue, this moment of accountability,” she said. Her kids, a 9-year-old daughter and a 12-year-old son, should not allowed to have telephones or use social media. “But honestly, I’ve had this unfair advantage.” 

As a therapist for more than 20 years, she has witnessed how platforms have an effect on youngsters’ consideration spans, “their self-esteem, their feelings about their bodies,” and how they trigger conflicts within their households.   

One Manhattan mom — a nurse with three daughters, aged 3, 6, and 10 — cited the “ridiculous” quantity of dad and mom “who don’t understand screens are dangerous, and so is social media.” The mother, who works the night time shift at an assisted residing facility, told The Post that she hoped the court determination would raise awareness in the “uphill battle” for dad and mom — and also push lawmakers to move laws.

“Hopefully, they will raise the legal age kids can have social media so it’s not considered the norm to have it and kids aren’t pushing back,” she told The Post. “When all the friends have it, it makes it a lot harder for the parents to forbid it.” 

A somber Amy Neville stands exterior of exterior the Los Angeles Superior Court last month, holding a image of her son Alexander, who died at age 14 from fentanyl bought through social media. Getty Images

Not that some dad and mom haven’t made strident efforts to mitigate the potential harms on their kids.

Veronica Feliciano, a 43-year-old waitress and mom of two from the Bronx, told The Post she had not even heard about the court circumstances, but favors dad and mom drawing a distinctive line.

“I think phones should be illegal for kids until they’re 18. If you try to take away the phone from a teen, they act crazy,” said Feliciano, who has a 14-year-old lady and a toddler son. “They wanna run away, and they wanna call the cops on you. 

“My son is 2, he only gets the iPad two hours on the weekend, and it has to be controlled. Because we don’t want screen addiction,” she continued. “But 10 years ago, when my daughter was his age, I didn’t know what we know today.” 

Feliciano herself understands the hazard all too nicely, telling The Post that a buddy of her daughter once began spreading hurtful lies about her household online.

“Sometimes social media causes real-life problems,” Feliciano said about the incident. “I feel like there has to be some kind of law.”

However, a Manhattan father of three youngsters, two sons and a daughter, steered that proscribing kids from utilizing social media would socially isolate them. 

“They only communicate with each other on Snapchat for texting and Instagram and TikTok for sharing videos and pics of themselves and commenting,” the dad, who requested anonymity, told The Post. 

Lori Schott (left) is embraced by a supporter exterior the LA courthouse last month. REUTERS

To him, the court victories are “meaningless” — the genie, he said, is out of the bottle. 

Furmin, who is a member of Mothers Against Media Addiction (MAMA), sees a lot of dad and mom who battle, “trying to carry the weight of all of this, and oftentimes parents throw their hands up.” They inform their teen little one to get off the cellphone, but the child is so addicted, they refuse — and that could cause “nightmares of family conflicts” that Frumin blames on the tech firms.    

“It has been proven in a court of law. We saw the internal documents. These companies design these products for maximum engagement,” Frumin vented. “They did not care about our kids’ safety or well-being. And so now we have harmful products that these kids are using.”  

Other dad and mom complained to Frumin that they continually take their kids to as many actions as attainable just to keep them off their screens — but she said all precautions exit the window when the kids head off to school rooms.

“A lot of these parents are trying really hard … And then they send their kid to school, and they’re sitting on a Chromebook all day, and they’re looking at different apps, and they can get past all these internet filters too,” Frumin said. “We’ve obtained to shift the way in which we do issues, but we need help as dad and mom. We need laws. 

“This burden should not be on us alone. It’s too heavy of a lift,” an exasperated Frumin said.

That burden has weighed closely on ParentsSOS web site chief Schmill, whose daughter Becca had been self-medicating with lethal fentanyl to cope with the trauma of having been raped by a boy she met on a social media occasion chat when she was 15. 

The rape was adopted by cyberbullying, as detailed on ParentsSOS, where dozens of other dad and mom have shared their heartbreaking tales of shedding a little one to social media-related incidents.    

The devastated mom told The Post in an electronic mail that she hoped Congress would now push for “a strong version of the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) that mirrors the Senate bill that passed that chamber with a historic 91–3 vote last session.” 

Of course, dad and mom themselves, too, “are addicted” to tech, admitted Lissette Rosario, a studying comprehension skilled from the Bronx, telling The Post, “We are used to being forced to use technology as a way of life.” 

But as adults, they’ve an benefit over kids, whose brains should not totally developed yet and are more inclined to lasting cognitive harm than adults. 

“Kids need to be protected,” Rosario said. “But it takes a whole village to protect a child, parents, teachers, Meta, the public, everyone has to be aware, and everyone has to do their part.”

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How Square, other payment apps push tipping policy on diners | Latest Tech News

Here’s a tip for restaurant goers.

As more eating places undertake digital payment systems that robotically counsel a gratuity option, debate has heated up over whether or not those suggestions must be calculated pre- or post-tax.

The matter of tipping and correct etiquette has long been a cultural debate, but the dialogue drew current consideration after a Dave & Buster’s controversy, where prospects accused the restaurant of operating a tipping “scam” by covertly inflating the 20% normal.

Customers shared that tip strategies differed based on whether or not they paid via a paper receipt or a digital payment platform, and the inconsistency had people questioning how tip quantities had been calculated — and whether or not the system was rising gratuity quantities on function.

Digital payment systems are making tipping simpler — and messier. From Square to Toast, variations in pre- or post-tax calculations and rounding could make your tip look greater than you anticipated. Rafael Henrique – stock.adobe.com

Some prompt that the disparities had been possible due to tax calculations. It appeared that the digital receipt gave a prompt tip based on a post-tax price, while the paper receipt provided a suggestion based on the pre-tax quantity.

The Post has reached out to major digital payment platforms such as Square, Toast, Stripe, Revel, Upserve and Clover for remark.

However, two choices might help eating places hike tip costs without the purchasers even realizing.

When setting up tipping on Square, for occasion, the account proprietor is requested to set a tip calculation and to choose whether or not they want suggestions to be added before or after taxes have been utilized to the sale.

Digital platform Toast also permits the restaurant to decide whether or not a tip proportion must be calculated before or after tax, and the prompt tip quantities visitors will see, according to their web site.

In addition, the default setting on Toast for tip calculation is to calculate tip before tax is added to a examine, so eating places would have to change that manually.

Setting tip calculation to be post-tax traces up with online accusations that digital payment choices calculate tipping in a different way than a paper receipt.

Looking at Square’s step-by-step information for business homeowners, they will select from a selection of tipping choices when setting up.

With the automated Smart Tip Amounts option, if a transaction is less than $10, the obtainable tipping choices are No Tip, $1, $2 or $3. For a transaction of $10 or more, the obtainable tipping choices are No Tip, 15%, 20% or 25%.

Set Percentage Amounts permits homeowners to enter three customized proportion choices, as properly as an option to enable prospects to enter an quantity of their selecting.

There’s also a Beta option where homeowners can select to ask for suggestions before payment is made.

There’s moreover one thing on Square called round-up tipping, which is able to robotically populate a tip based on the overall transaction measurement. If the overall transaction is less than $20, the tip will spherical up the quantity to the next $1. If it’s more than $20, it is going to spherical up the quantity to the next $5.

So while Square’s operations are computerized, the restaurant has control over how a lot it chooses to acquire.

Account homeowners or staff members with objects and stock permissions also set unit costs themselves in the Square dashboard.

They can bulk import objects, sometimes to add the catalog or menu for the first time, as properly as manually update and change particular person objects.

With customers noticing more and more discrepancies on their payments these days, it is perhaps value checking the itemized invoice given on the digital payment platform and evaluating it to menu costs.

Restaurants select the settings that control how suggestions are calculated. flowertiare – stock.adobe.com

Beyond Square and Toast, other fashionable payment platforms deal with tipping a bit in a different way.

Stripe lets eating places select what tip strategies seem at checkout — the platform shows the choices the business units up instead of independently calculating or inflating tip quantities.

Revel and Upserve both let eating places organize the tipping choices prospects see — including what prompt tip quantities pop up — and some platforms like Toast also let companies select whether or not suggestions are calculated before or after tax.

Clover lets eating places allow or disable digital tipping and select what proportion choices seem, but its docs don’t clearly show a toggle for pre- vs. post‑tax calculation — it calculates suggestions on the subtotal plus changes (including tax) by default.

In short, it’s not the platforms secretly mountaineering your tip — it’s the companies themselves making the alternatives.

Customers who see discrepancies between digital and paper receipts are often just seeing the consequence of different settings or rounding guidelines on each system.

For instance, Square’s “round-up” function can push suggestions barely greater relying on the transaction whole, while Toast defaults to pre-tax calculations unless the restaurant modifications it.

The takeaway for diners? If your tip appears to be like off, examine the receipt rigorously.

Digital systems make tipping simpler, but they will also make it simpler for small inconsistencies to pop up — and now customers are noticing.

As eating places more and more rely on technology for funds, the controversy over pre- or post-tax tipping is unlikely to disappear anytime soon.

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