Big Tobacco Had Its Reckoning. Now It’s Big Tech’s Turn.

The floodgates are open.

Thousands of lawsuits are moving forward. States are writing new rules for kids online. And lawmakers are beginning to tell AI companies what they can and cannot do when children use their products.

And you don't have to look far to see it happening...

The courts: 3,000+ lawsuits get the green light

On August 10, the Ninth Circuit allowed more than 3,000 lawsuits against Meta, Google/YouTube, TikTok and Snap to move forward.

The cases allege that the companies deliberately designed features of their platforms to be addictive, particularly for young users.

The tech companies had argued that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act protected them from the claims. The court rejected their attempt to use Section 230 to stop the litigation at this stage, finding that it provides a defense rather than immunity from being sued.

At their core, these cases are allegations about the platforms themselves: how they were designed, how they kept people engaged, and what responsibility the companies bear for the consequences.

The companies will still have the opportunity to defend themselves against those allegations.

But with more than 3,000 cases now getting the chance to be heard, this is getting harder to argue away.

New Jersey: families get a way to enforce the rules

One day later, New Jersey Governor Mikie Sherrill signed the New Jersey Kids Code Act into law.

The law establishes new design and privacy requirements for covered online services likely to be accessed by minors. Among other provisions, it requires high privacy settings by default, restricts certain push notifications, prohibits dark patterns for minors, limits how children's personal data can be used and retained, and places restrictions on targeted advertising.

But one provision in particular changes the accountability equation: a private right of action.

An individual under 18 who is injured by a violation can bring a claim under the law, with statutory damages of $5,000 per violation. Parents may also bring an action on a minor's behalf.

Which is legal language for something pretty simple: families don't have to wait around for a regulator to act. They can take companies to court themselves.

Colorado: AI safety starts becoming a legal requirement

Then there's Colorado.

Earlier this year, Governor Jared Polis signed Colorado HB 26-1263, establishing specific requirements for operators of conversational AI services.

And this one is worth paying attention to because the law doesn't simply tell AI companies to "keep kids safe." It starts defining what that actually means.

Operators must estimate users' ages. When dealing with minors, the law requires recurring disclosures that they are interacting with AI rather than a person and establishes protections around sexually explicit interactions.

It also addresses one of the most unsettling questions surrounding companion-style AI: emotional dependence.

The law requires safeguards designed to prevent conversational AI from producing statements that simulate emotional dependence. It also requires protocols for responding to suicidal ideation and self-harm, privacy and account-management tools for minors and parents or guardians, and reporting requirements intended to help regulators evaluate whether those safeguards are actually working.

The law takes effect January 1, 2027.

For companies building conversational AI, that's a meaningful shift. Child safety is moving beyond a set of voluntary guardrails companies write for themselves. In Colorado, some of those guardrails are becoming law.

It's no coincidence that this is all happening at once.

Big Tobacco didn't wake up one morning and discover the world had changed its mind. The reckoning came piece by piece, until lawsuits became regulation and an industry that had spent decades setting its own standards was finally forced to take responsibility for the harm its products caused.

We're watching that shift happen again.

For years, the responsibility for keeping kids safe online has fallen on parents.

Set the parental controls. Check the privacy settings. Watch the screen time. Know which apps they're using. Figure out who they're talking to. Keep up with every new platform, algorithm and now AI chatbot entering their lives.

All while the technology on the other side of the screen gets more sophisticated by the month.

Now courts and lawmakers are starting to ask the companies building that technology a much more uncomfortable question:

If children are using your products, what are you doing to keep them safe?

For families, that's the shift that matters most.

This isn't another round of false promises to "do better."

This is legislation. These are lawsuits. This is accountability beginning to have teeth.

Parents will always have the role of protecting their children online. We happen to believe they should have far more visibility and control over the technology entering their families' lives, not less.

But parents cannot be the entire safety system.

The law is making clear that the companies designing the products, writing the algorithms and building the AI our kids interact with have a responsibility, too.

And when they fail to meet it, they'll finally be held accountable.

Sam Altman keeps pitching AI as a co-parent. The reason parents aren't buying isn't nostalgia, it's the lawsuits.

Last Friday, Sam Altman had an idea he was excited about. Hook your family calendar up to ChatGPT, tell it what your kids are into, and every morning on the drive to school it'll produce a little podcast: one kid's soccer game that afternoon, another kid's birthday coming up, maybe some news. He called it a "cool use case."

What should’ve felt really innovative, landed like the opening scene of a bleak dystopian movie. Two kids in the back, one parent up front, and a smooth synthetic voice narrating, to everyone present, the lives of everyone present. "Later today, Maya has soccer." Maya, who has soccer, looks out the window. Nobody says anything, because the podcast is saying it for them.

The internet population caught what we caught. The reply that stuck came from Alex Hirsch, creator of Disney’s Animated series, Gravity Falls. It was seven poignant words: "What if you just talked to your children?" That was the entire rebuttal, and it traveled a great deal further than the thing it was rebutting. Altman's post drew somewhere around 9,600 likes. Hirsch's reply cleared 120,000. On the CEO's own platform, the crowd took a vote, and the crowd chose the small talk.

Now, we want to be fair here, because the easy thing is to dunk and move on. But we’re parents here at Permission and anyone who has done the 7:40 a.m. drive on four hours of sleep, refereeing a backseat dispute about who touched whom first, knows the exact fantasy of a button that handles the morning. That instinct isn't a character flaw. It's a Tuesday.

But this wasn't a one-off. Altman has been quietly auditioning AI for the co-parent role for a while now. On The Tonight Show in December 2025 he said he couldn't imagine having to "raise a newborn without ChatGPT" then added that people had managed the trick for a few hundred thousand years without it. Also, last year, in a podcast hosted by Andrew Mayne, Altman admitted that people might form “problematic parasocial relationships” to a chatbot. (You know, the one-sided kind that we usually reserve for celebrities we've never met.) He sees the hazards clearly. He's pitching the product anyway.

When visibility turns into vulnerability.

The reason parents flinched at the idea of carpooling with a chatbot for school drop off isn't that they're allergic to convenience. It's that the company making the offer is, right now, being sued by multiple families who say its chatbot played a role in their loved ones' spiraling delusions and, in the worst cases, their deaths. OpenAI says it is continually improving how its models handle sensitive conversations, and that work genuinely matters. But you can see the problem. "Let me into your calendar, your commute, and your kids personal details" is a big ask from anyone. It is a much bigger ask from a company currently explaining itself in court.

Trust isn't a feature you ship in the next update. It's something people hand you slowly, and take back all at once.

Here's where we should admit an interest. We build Permission on a belief that sounds boring until you sit with it: your data belongs to you. With Permission your kids’ browsing history doesn’t get shipped out to the open internet. Not to a model, not to a growth chart, not to whoever posts the next cool use case. And the closer AI creeps toward our kids (and it is creeping, because kids are already asking it everything) the more one question starts to outrank all the others:

Where is the line between parenting and outsourcing parenting?

Because "parenting tool" is doing a lot of quiet work in that phrase. A tool is a hammer. It lives in a drawer, it does one honest thing, and it does not ask to read your child's messages or move into the family calendar. When a company calls its chatbot a "parenting tool," it's worth asking, gently, which word they mean. The tool part, or the parenting part.

We happen to think AI can be genuinely, unglamorously useful to families. Not by doing the talking for you, but by handing you the context you'd otherwise miss instead of a thousand panicked notifications, and then getting out of the way so you can make the call. That's a real distinction, and it deserves its own piece.

So take this as Part One: the news, the flinch, and the reason the flinch is earned. In Part Two, we'll make the harder and more hopeful argument that you can let AI help you parent without completely handing over your family secrets. There is a version of this where the grown-ups stay in charge. We think it's the only version worth building.

For now, the seven best words anyone has offered on the whole affair still belong to Hirsch. So we'll give him the last one, too.

What if you just talked to your children?

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For years, concerns about the harm social media platforms cause children were categorized as “alleged.” In the spring of 2026, juries started using different words: negligent, deceptive, unconscionable. Courts are now saying what parents have long suspected: the design was the harm. Here is what the courtroom evidence now shows and why parents should be paying close attention.

Before a Child Can Tell Fact From Fiction

Before children are developmentally equipped to distinguish fact from fiction, digital systems have already begun influencing how they think, what captures their attention, and how they begin forming their sense of identity.

Social media platforms no longer function as just communication tools today. They increasingly shape how children develop self-worth, regulate emotion, build social relationships, and understand the world around them.

For years, concerns surrounding children’s relationship with technology were often dismissed as parental anxiety or treated as speculation. That argument is becoming harder to sustain.

Across courtrooms, regulatory investigations, internal company disclosures, and mounting scientific research, a clear pattern is emerging: some of the world’s largest technology companies have built systems that maximize engagement by exploiting psychological vulnerabilities in young users, while parents remain largely unaware of what they have actually consented to.

The issue is no longer whether these systems pose risks to children.

The more urgent question is whether the systems themselves will fundamentally change, or whether society will continue documenting the damage in real time while continuing to participate in the very system that creates it. 

The Environment Around Childhood Has Changed

The environment children grow up in has changed.

• Up to 95% of teens aged 13–17 report using a social platform, and more than a third say they use it "almost constantly."
• Nearly 40% of children aged 8–12 are already using social media — below the age most platforms claim to serve. 
• Use exceeding about three hours a day has been associated with elevated anxiety, depression, suicidal ideation and body-image distress.

Why are children so easily targeted by these platforms? In adolescence, the regions that govern judgment and emotional steadiness are still maturing, while those that respond to approval, comparison, and reward are already highly active. These platforms are designed to pull on exactly those urges - through likes, notifications, feeds that never end, and "recommended for you" videos that keep coming.

The American Psychological Association has warned that this combination leaves minors more prone to compulsive use, and more exposed to the emotional toll of measuring themselves by how others react to them online.

As reported in Parenting in the Age of AI: Why Tech Is Making Parenting Harder — and What Parents Can Do, parenting got harder because the environment has shifted.

For the first time, families are raising children inside digital environments designed to maximize engagement  and continuously compete for attention. Traditional parenting tools now operate against these systems that are created to keep children online for as long as possible.

What many parents experience as daily frustration is often not a parenting challenge. It is the result of an environment intentionally optimized to override the limits parents try to set.

What the Lawsuits Prove

For years, the harm caused by digital platforms was “alleged.” 

That is changing rapidly.

Between 2024 and 2026, a series of major lawsuits against companies including Meta, TikTok, Google, Character.AI and OpenAI have moved beyond accusation and into courtrooms where evidence is now being publicly examined.

These lawsuits all share something important: they don't blame a single video or post for harming a child. They blame how the apps themselves are built — the endless scroll, the recommendations that decide what your child sees next, the AI designed to keep them watching.

For years, companies argued they couldn't be held responsible for what users posted on their platforms. These cases now point to the design itself, the features built to capture and hold a child's attention. Courts are now increasingly letting those claims move forward. 

• K.G.M. v. Meta & Google/YouTube
• State of New Mexico v. Meta
• Anderson v. TikTok
• United States v. TikTok & ByteDance 
• Garcia v. Character Technologies
• State of Florida v. OpenAI & Sam Altman

The courts, claims, design features and outcomes are laid out in Appendix A.

The Pattern

Across nearly every major lawsuit involving child safety and digital platforms, an alarming pattern continues to repeat itself.

• Internal research identifies harm early.
• Executives are made aware of developmental, psychological, and behavioral risks to minors.
• Product teams continue implementing design choices that increase engagement despite those findings.
• Public messaging continues emphasizing safety while internal evidence often tells a different story.

Only after years of public pressure do regulators or courts intervene.

When growth and user wellbeing compete, technology companies have repeatedly demonstrated which one wins. While accountability has almost always arrived only after harm has already occurred.

The Consent Parents Never Gave

At the center of nearly every child safety dispute in technology sits a deeper issue that receives far less attention: consent.

Modern internet platforms operate under the assumption that consent has been obtained simply because a user clicked “I agree.”

But clicking “I agree” was never meaningful consent.

Meaningful consent requires understanding consequences.

Yet most parents are never clearly told:

• How algorithms shape what children see.
• How behavioral data is continuously collected and analyzed.
• How engagement systems are designed around psychological reward loops.
• How platforms measure emotional responses, attention patterns, and behavioral tendencies to optimize retention.
• How artificial intelligence systems increasingly personalize influence in ways families cannot see.

Parents were never fully informed about the environments their children were entering.

Will Anything Change?

What gets accepted today becomes the default tomorrow. 

The risks, the design choices and the outcomes are now well documented.

Much of what happens next will be shaped by a series of major bellwether cases already underway. The 2026 verdicts in K.G.M. v. Meta and State of New Mexico v. Meta were early signals.

Federal litigation is now accelerating through MDL 3047, where more than 2,600 cases against major tech companies have been consolidated, with the first federal bellwether trial beginning in June 2026.

The outcomes of these cases will help define the future relationship between families and technology.

At Permission, we closely monitor this litigation because it keeps returning to the same core truth: parents deserve to know what their children are actually consenting to — and children deserve to grow up in environments designed to support their development, not exploit their vulnerabilities.

Parents deserve to understand these environments while they are still evolving, not years later, after the consequences are already visible. And children deserve to grow up in environments designed to support their development, not exploit their vulnerabilities.

Learn more about why AI needs permission (and what it means for your family) at AI needs Permission. Permission is actively tracking this litigation and the broader shift it represents for families, AI, and the future of consent online.

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There's something that happens when Permission starts working for your family. You notice things earlier. Conversations get easier. The guesswork goes away.

And almost immediately, you think of another family who needs this.

Now there's a simple way to share it — and get rewarded when you do.

How It Works

Refer Permission to other parents. When three families subscribe through your unique referral link, you receive a $30 gift card — automatically, with no limit on how many times you can earn.**

It's straightforward:

1. Get your unique referral link from your Permission account
2. Share it with parents you think would benefit
3. Once three families subscribe to a paid plan, your $30 gift card is on its way

That's it. No complicated tiers. No tracking spreadsheets. Just sharing something you believe in and being rewarded for it.

A Few Things to Know

• Rewards are triggered by completed paid subscriptions — free trials don't count.
• You'll receive a notification once your reward has been credited.
• Gift cards are fulfilled via our rewards partner, Tremendous. Redemption availability may vary.
• When sharing your referral link, please disclose that you may receive a reward if the person you refer subscribes. Example: "I use Permission and earn rewards when friends sign up through my link."
• Program terms apply. See our Terms of Use for full details.

Why We Built This

Permission works best when it spreads the way trust does — through people who know each other.

Parents talk. They share what's working and what isn't. They ask each other for recommendations on everything from pediatricians to schools to apps. We'd rather reward that natural word-of-mouth than spend that money on ads.

When you refer a family to Permission, you're not just earning a gift card. You're helping another parent feel less alone in navigating their child's digital life.

Ready to Share?

Get your referral link → https://app.permission.ai/motivate

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