Attorneys for parents say publishers are addicting users and causing health issues like ADHD and depression.
Kushanel Donerson says her 14-year-old has played Call of Duty, NBA 2K, Grand Theft Auto V and Roblox games so much over the past nine years that it led to brain damage, a stroke and seizures. Jaclyn Angelilli says her 9-year-old has been playing many of the same video games “at an increasing and uncontrollable pace” since age 6 and has been diagnosed with multiple psychiatric disorders.
The two mothers have joined a wave of lawsuits that accuse the video game industry of profiting from intentionally promoting mass addiction. The complaints have been stacking up since last year, when hundreds of other families won rulings allowing them to pursue similar claims against the biggest social media platforms. Decades after tobacco companies were hit with a crush of addiction lawsuits, more and more technology giants are facing their own reckoning in the courts.
“It makes a lot of sense because these are all the same addictive designs,” says Seton Hall University School of Law professor Gaia Bernstein, who wrote a book about addictive technologies.
Parents’ attorneys are attempting to have more than a dozen video game addiction lawsuits filed so far grouped together before a single federal judge at a hearing set for May 30 in Salt Lake City. While victory for the parents is far from assured, the risk for the game publishers is real. If the litigation follows the explosive path of the social media lawsuits, the industry could theoretically face hundreds of millions of dollars in damages—even if not on the scale of the $206 billion Big Tobacco settlement of a quarter century ago. Just as significant, getting pummeled in court could force publishers to make their games less compulsive, potentially lowering users’ screen time and thus raising the likelihood they’ll spend less on downloadable game products and lucrative in-game payments.
Donerson and Angelilli’s targets include Microsoft, Nintendo of America, Sony Interactive Entertainment, Roblox, and Fortnite developer Epic Games, among others. The companies are part of an industry whose global revenue is forecast to top $200 billion by 2026.
The Entertainment Software Association, of which Microsoft, Nintendo, Sony and Epic Games are members, disputes the lawsuits’ claims that the games are harmful. “We prioritize creating positive experiences for the entire player community and provide easy-to-use tools for players, parents and caregivers to manage numerous aspects of gameplay,” the association said in a statement. “Claims that say otherwise are not rooted in fact and ignore the reality that billions of people globally, of all ages and backgrounds, play video games in a healthy, balanced way.”
(Microsoft said it deferred to the ESA statement. Epic Games declined comment. Nintendo, Roblox and Sony Interactive did not respond to requests for comment.)
The gaming suits stand to benefit from early rulings in the social media cases that poked holes in the legal shield internet companies have relied on for decades—Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. A California state judge in Los Angeles and a federal judge in Oakland overseeing a total of more than 1,000 cases found last fall that the 1996 federal law, which protects platforms from being sued over content posted by third parties, doesn’t apply to algorithms designed to keep users visiting their sites.
But even if plaintiffs such as Donerson and Angelilli clear the Section 230 gateway hurdle, others remain.
Microsoft and Roblox argued in a March filing seeking dismissal of a suit brought against them in Arkansas that parents who condemn their games as “too engaging” miss the point that the content is protected as free speech under the US Constitution’s First Amendment.
The lawsuits, the companies contend, “present the digital equivalent of suing a video library for distributing allegedly ‘addictive’ movies, or a recording studio for providing a forum and equipment to create music that is ‘too catchy.’”
Another challenge for parents is that the laws governing personal injury suits haven’t changed as quickly as the technology landscape. Product liability statutes were written to address tangible goods, like the nicotine that makes cigarettes addictive, not the software code that powers entertainment platforms. Beyond that, the parents will need to prove that the harms their kids are suffering stem directly from their use of the technologies and not from other influences in their lives.
In this new legal frontier, a core claim by plaintiffs is that company-built algorithms function like casino slot machines doling out intermittent “jackpots,” which take the form of time-released rewards in video games or “likes” on social media apps. Court filings in the social media litigation compare children to the mice in B.F. Skinner’s famous experiments that appeared more likely to press a lever when it dispensed treats at random rather than consistently.
The video gaming complaints draw on research showing that long-term gameplay activates the brain in a way similar to drugs and can damage cognitive function. The allegedly resulting list of conditions cited in the suits includes attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and high blood pressure, as well as emotional distress and social isolation.
“I can’t go and buy liquor or anything like that 24/7,” says Angelilli’s Atlanta-based lawyer, Tina Bullock. “The fact that this can be in a child’s hands 24/7 is shocking.”
The medical community is increasingly investigating video games’ possible health impact. The World Health Organization recognized “gaming disorder” as a diagnosable illness in 2018, coinciding with a surge in rehabilitation programs for hard-core gamers. The American Psychiatric Association in 2013 called for further study after examining the issue for several years, and in 2023 said the research and debate are ongoing. Reaching scientific consensus can take time in this space: After decades of worry that video games trigger real-world violence, the American Psychological Association in 2020 said there “is insufficient scientific evidence to support a causal link between violent video games and violent behavior.”
Lawyers are already moving on to other technologies that they say are being used to exploit vulnerable populations. Attorney Tim Giordano, whose firm filed a suit on Valentine’s Day against Match Group Inc. on behalf of users of its Tinder and Hinge dating apps, says that addiction and psychological manipulation “know no age.” He adds: “Anybody can fall prey—especially with the dating apps when they are misled with the strongest carrot known to mankind: love.”
Match in a federal court filing in San Francisco last month said that Tinder and Hinge users must use private arbitration for any dispute, rather than pursue a court remedy, because they accepted the apps’ terms of use. And in a statement, a Match spokesperson noted that the company’s business model isn’t based on user engagement metrics. “This lawsuit is ridiculous and has zero merit,” the spokesperson said. “We actively strive to get people on dates every day and off our apps. Anyone who states anything else doesn’t understand the purpose and mission of our entire industry.”
Besides, Matthew Lawrence, an Emory University law professor whose research focuses on addictions, says a user’s weakness for dating apps is a “different category of seriousness” from children strung out on screen time.
“We don’t have a surgeon general’s report that I have seen about the dangers of dating apps to 30-year-olds,” Lawrence says.
Written by: Rachel Graf @Bloomberg
The post “Kids Hooked on Video Games Prompt a Flurry of Lawsuits” first appeared on Bloomberg
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