theSIGNAL TECHNOLOGY
25 June 2026
"The tools we build end up building us."
NEWSBUSINESSTECHNOLOGYWORLDSCIENCECULTUREENVIRONMENTSPORT
Photo: Eddy Billard / Unsplash
A teenager scrolls through social media late at night, a habit courts now scrutinise as potentially engineered addiction.
⚖️
$6m
First jury award for platform-linked mental harm
Discuss
  • Why might companies choose to settle cases quietly rather than fight them in court?
  • Is it fair to compare social media features like autoplay to addictive substances — why or why not?
  • Should courts in one country, such as the United States, be able to set global standards for how platforms are designed?
  • At what age, if any, do you think young people should take full responsibility for how they use social media platforms?
Technology

YouTube Settles Teen Addiction Case as Courts Close In

A quiet settlement with a Florida teenager signals that the legal reckoning for social media's hold on children is only accelerating.

Six million dollars. That was the number a Los Angeles jury placed on the mental health damage done to a 20-year-old California woman, known in court documents as K.G.M.

, after finding that Meta and YouTube had intentionally designed their platforms to be addictive to young users. It was the first time any court had assigned liability to those companies for the psychological effects of their products — and it set the stage for everything that followed. Within weeks of that landmark verdict, YouTube's parent company Google moved quietly to settle a second, closely related case. The plaintiff, a 15-year-old Floridian identified only as R.

K.C., had alleged that features such as infinite scroll and autoplay were not incidental conveniences but deliberate mechanisms engineered to drive compulsive use. Google spokesman José Castañeda confirmed the resolution in a brief statement, saying the matter had been "amicably resolved" and that the company's focus remained on building age-appropriate products and parental controls.

He did not disclose the financial terms. The settlement does not end R.K.C.

's legal campaign. He is still suing Meta, TikTok, and Snap Inc in a trial scheduled to begin on 27 July in Los Angeles, overseen by Superior Court Judge Carolyn Kuhl, who is managing more than 1,000 similar California cases.

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Leadership at these social media companies have been strategizing for years to hook children early and maximize their usage.
John Morgan and Emily Jeffcott, Attorneys for R.K.C.
Technology

OpenAI and Broadcom forge a custom AI chip

In nine months, OpenAI and Broadcom designed a chip from scratch — a timeline that would have seemed reckless in any previous era of silicon engineering. The result is Jalapeño, an ASIC built exclusively for large language model inference in data centers. Unlike the general-purpose GPUs that currently power most AI systems, Jalapeño was shaped directly by OpenAI's own research roadmap. …
  • Should AI companies design their own chips, or rely on independent suppliers?
Technology

US immigration surveillance spending hits record $513m

In 2013, the US government spent under $50 million on immigration surveillance contracts. By 2026, that figure had reached $513 million — a tenfold rise that a new report describes as unprecedented. The analysis, produced by Mijente, Just Futures Law and the Surveillance Resistance Lab, found that contracts with eleven surveillance companies doubled between 2024 and 2025 alone. …
  • Should governments be allowed to fund the private companies that build their own surveillance tools?
AMERICAS · Technology
AI models capable of devastating attacks on governments and business months away, rare Five Eyes statement warns
EUROPE · Technology
Met to expand use of live facial recognition into central London by Christmas
ASIA · Technology
Walmart-backed Flipkart expands quick-commerce push as Amazon ramps up in India
GLOBAL · Technology
It's not just about nudity warns actress - the complex reality of images and online abuse
theSIGNAL IN THE LAB
1VOCABULARY
landmark verdictamicably resolved
compulsive useforeseeable human consequencesunprecedented
primary beneficiariesinference
2GRAMMAR FOCUS
Third conditional — hypothetical past
Use the third conditional to talk about hypothetical situations in the past and their imagined results: 'If + past perfect, would/could/might + have + past participle.' Both the condition and the result are contrary to what actually happened.
would have settled · had not designed · could have avoided · had reached · might have questioned · would have seemed · had doubled
  1. If YouTube its platforms to be addictive, the landmark lawsuit might never have reached a jury.
  2. The nine-month chip timeline reckless in any previous era of silicon engineering, had the companies not worked so closely together.
  3. If the jury a figure of $6 million sooner, Google might have chosen to settle the R.K.C. case before trial.
  4. Google the R.K.C. case far more quickly if the first verdict against Meta had been even larger.
  5. If surveillance spending $513 million without a published report, the scale of the contracts might have gone largely unnoticed.
  6. Had autoplay and infinite scroll been accidental features, courts whether the companies bore any legal responsibility.
  7. If surveillance contracts between 2024 and 2025, the report's authors might not have described the trend as unprecedented.
3PHRASAL VERBS
Match the phrasal verb (1–6) to its definition (A–F). All six appear in today's articles.
  1. 1. set the stage for
  2. 2. close in
  3. 3. outlast
  4. 4. stretching from
  5. 5. drawn from
  6. 6. built to
4CRITICAL THINKING
The report on immigration surveillance describes the Department of Homeland Security as acting like a 'billion-dollar incubator' for private tech companies. What are the risks of a government agency simultaneously funding, regulating, and purchasing from the same private suppliers — and who, if anyone, provides meaningful oversight in such arrangements?
5CREATIVE · HEADLINES
Write a headline for the top story in each of the following styles. One line each, no explanation:
  • TABLOID NEWSPAPER
  • LUXURY MAGAZINE
  • ACTIVIST BLOG
6WRITING
A Google spokesman described the settlement as an 'amicably resolved' matter, while the plaintiff continues to sue three other platforms. To what extent do you think legal language like 'amicably resolved' obscures the real significance of cases like this — and why might that matter to the public?
7DEGREES OF EXTREMITY
Complete each ladder from mild to strong using words from the articles and related vocabulary.
  • concerned about screen time→→
  • useful feature→→
  • minor complaint→→
  • monitored→→
  • settled quietly→→
  • helpful tool→→
  • improved hardware→→
8SPEAKING
  1. Can a single jury verdict genuinely change how platforms are designed?
  2. Who bears more responsibility for surveillance technology — buyers or builders?
  3. Does faster chip design mean corners are being cut on safety?
  4. Could rising legal costs ever make social media platforms safer by default?
  5. Is tenfold spending growth on surveillance ever justifiable — when?