93-3-WMR Audio on Demand presents the Preston and Steve show podcast.

And now, Preston and Steve's news update with Kathy Romano.

And today is October 25th, a Wednesday. Good morning, Kathy.

Good morning in the news this morning. A group of 33 states, including

California and New York, are suing meta-platforms incorporated for harming young people's

mental health and contributing to youth mental health crisis by knowingly designing features on

Instagram and Facebook that addict children to its platforms. The lawsuit filed in federal court in

California also claims that meta-routinely collects data on children under 13 without their parents' consent in violation of federal law.

Kids and teenagers are suffering from record levels of poor mental health and social media companies like META are to blame, said New York Attorney General Latitia James.

META has profited from children's pain by intentionally designing its platforms

that manipulate features that make children addicted to their platforms while lowering their self-esteem.

The broad-range suit is the result of an investigation led by a bipartisan coalition of attorneys

from California, Florida, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Nebraska, New Jersey, Tennessee, and Vermont.

You know, it's funny, Kathy, because I was talking to a neighbor's teenage daughter, you know,

and we were just chatting and I forget how it came up, but basically, she says she blames the phones.

And so she blames like this.

So in other words, I think it started to happen where the people who are most affected by it are really kind of bristling back against it saying, you know, we're being manipulated.

Yeah.

So, Steve, they actually did an internal study and it cited 13.5% of teen girls saying Instagram makes thoughts, makes thoughts of suicide

worse and 17% of the teen girls saying that it makes eating disorders worse.

I mean, she was clear on it and saying that she felt that it was, what she blamed initially

was she goes, it's the phones, it's the phones.

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