. 2 hours ago 19 Tech companies have spent years telling parents they're working to make their products safer for children. But ongoing jury trials, settlements and related litigation against the likes of Meta, Google and Snap suggest that they're not doing enough. The latest examples landed this week. Snap confidentially settled a case claiming that its technology caused severe psychological distress to two teenage users. Meta, TikTok and YouTube previously settled with the plaintiffs in the same suit. And Google was sued this week by the parents of a child who allegedly suffered a psychological crisis after chatting with the Gemini AI chatbot in Google Classroom. Concern is intensifying as artificial intelligence companies pursue trillion-dollar valuations, and established internet giants pour money into developing advanced AI models while pushing them into the classroom. Products and features intended to maximize engagement can have detrimental effects on users, thus warranting "broader systemic changes in tech design, particularly when children are using them," said developmental psychologist Kate Blocker. "I think it's so so important that children's safety is being considered when these products - AI, social media, et cetera - are being designed, and not after the fact as these problems emerge," said Blocker, the director of research and programs for the nonprofit Children and Screens. Snap's settlement this week, which spared CEO Evan Spiegel from testifying in a Los Angeles court, continues a general trend of tech companies attempting to shield themselves from public scrutiny due to the various high-profile child-safety related trials this year, said Joseph McNally, the director of emerging litigation at McNicholas & McNicholas. The case was one of several lawsuits related to the social media personal injury trial that Meta and YouTube lost earlier this year. More trials are slated to commence in March. "I view this settlement and the other settlements in this space as an effort by tech companies to turn a corner, not only because I think that there were real legal challenges, but also the reputation of their products, the reputation of their companies has really been hit," said McNally, a former acting U.S. attorney for the Central District of California. "The parties are pleased to have been able to resolve this matter in an amicable manner," a Snap spokesperson said in a statement. "We've built safeguards, launched safety tutorials, and partnered with experts and because safety is never finished, we remain committed to continually strengthening the safety, privacy, and well-being of our community," the Snap spokesperson said. But there remains a federal case involving Meta, TikTok, Snap and YouTube and a litany of nationwide school districts, along with various state attorneys general suits. In August, Meta agreed to pay nearly $17 billion to settle with a group of state AGs in a child mental health case. Some AGs are still pursuing similar suits against Meta's rivals. The social media lawsuits have helped inform parents and the public about how the industry designs products used by teenagers and children, McNally said. "It's the technology arms race that continues," he said. "What is oftentimes missing is how you balance that participation in the arms race with utility and then product safety." More scrutiny in the classroom. Google ran into more criticism this week for moving too fast. The New York Times reported on Tuesday that K-12 schools that don't allow use of Google's AI tools for students will lose access to search. Chris Phillips, vice president for education at Google, told the Times that, "Search and AI are deeply integrated." That coincided with the new lawsuit against Google centering on a teen's alleged suicidal crisis that the parents attributed to the company's Gemini AI. The plaintiff's attorneys allege that "despite Gemini's known risks, Google hastily integrated" Gemini into Chromebook computers for school children. "We are reviewing the claims in the lawsuit and we take this very seriously," a Google spokesperson said in a statement. "We've worked extensively with medical professionals and academic experts to build features that help young people find critical support and trusted resources when they need it." Google and its internet peers have for decades been able to rely on Section 230. Passed in 1996, the federal legislation has protected social media companies from being sued over content posted by their users. That's why plaintiffs' attorneys and state AGs have been focused on alleged harms stemming from the design of the tech platforms as opposed to their content. Some plaintiffs are using the same tactics against AI companies. OpenAI faces several lawsuits from state AGs and plaintiff attorneys, taking cues from the social media suits in alleging that the design of ChatGPT can pose risks to children. The litigation could become a growing financial risk as the company plans for a potential blockbuster IPO. OpenAI competitor Anthropic, which is planning to go public this month, highlighted the issue in its prospectus, even though the Claude creator prohibits children from using its product. "This is a clear indication that tech companies anticipate more litigation risks than they did a decade ago," said Michele Neitz, a professor at the University of San Francisco School of Law. Blocker said that the highly personalized nature of current AI-powered chat apps makes it "a little bit unpredictable" to determine exactly what the apps will say to kids. She stressed the importance of testing and evaluating these products for children's developmental safety from the start, "not after harms start happening." This collective litigation has helped educate the public on the potential pitfalls of poor product design choices, Blocker said. And it could be a catalyzing force for change in the tech industry. "Certainly there's a hope that this will motivate real systemic change, both from a regulation standpoint and internal company decision-making standpoint," Blocker said. If you are having suicidal thoughts or are in distress, contact the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988 for support and assistance from a trained counselor. * Homepage * CNBC * Tech companies face mounting child safety lawsuits while pushing AI into schools

Snap opens Los Angeles pop-up for its $2,195 Spectacles AR glasses. Snap is giving the public a rare hands-on look at its fifth-generation Spectacles in Los Angeles, but a broad consumer launch remains elusive. Photo: Snap On November 5, 2026, news surfaced that Snap has opened a dedicated pop-up space in Los Angeles, giving curious tech enthusiasts and developers an opportunity to test-drive its fifth-generation Spectacles AR glasses in person. According to androidheadlines.com, the pop-up offers rare public access to hardware that has otherwise remained locked behind an expensive developer-only barrier. Despite the showcase, however, Snap confirmed during its latest earnings call that a general consumer release date is still not on the calendar. The fifth-generation Spectacles represent Snap's most ambitious hardware project to date. Unlike previous iterations, which were essentially stylish sunglasses with onboard video recording cameras, this model features standalone augmented reality. It packs custom dual Liquid Crystal on Silicon (LCoS) micro-projectors, optical waveguides, and inside-out hand tracking directly into the frame. It runs on Snap OS, allowing users to interact with floating digital lenses, play shared spatial games, and place virtual objects in real-world physical environments. Getting access to the device has historically required a hefty commitment. Snap originally launched the fifth-generation Spectacles through a developer program priced at $99 per month with a mandatory one-year contract, or an upfront developer package totaling around $2,195. By bringing the hardware to an accessible public storefront in Los Angeles, Snap is attempting to drum up organic enthusiasm and gather real-world user feedback from people outside the standard developer bubble. What this means: Snap is walking a very fine line between teasing the public and managing realistic hardware expectations. Fully standalone AR glasses remain notoriously difficult to commercialize at scale. The current Spectacles hardware is bulky, weighs well over 200 grams, and offers approximately 45 minutes of active battery life. By showcasing the device in a controlled retail environment, Snap can demonstrate its sophisticated hand-tracking and social lenses without having to answer difficult questions about all-day outdoor wearability, thermal throttling, or everyday prescription lens support. How it compares: The broader spatial computing market has sharply divided into two camps. On one side are lightweight AI smart glasses, best exemplified by the massively popular Ray-Ban Meta collection, which ditch visual displays entirely in favor of lightweight audio, cameras, and rapid voice assistants. On the other side are ambitious standalone true-AR prototypes like Meta's Orion and Snap's Spectacles. While Orion remains an internal research prototype using silicon carbide waveguides that cost thousands of dollars per unit to assemble, Snap has actually put working hardware into developers' hands. However, at a $2,195 price tag and without consumer availability, Snap is not competing with consumer eyewear yet. Instead, it is racing to build the spatial app ecosystem before tech giants can reduce the cost of waveguide manufacturing. For now, the Los Angeles pop-up provides an intriguing glimpse into Snap's long-term vision. If you happen to be in Southern California, testing the hardware firsthand offers a tangible preview of where augmented reality is heading over the next few years. For everyone else, the wait for an affordable, lightweight pair of consumer AR glasses continues. Interactive guide: prices, displays, cameras, battery.

Snap lays out its developer playbook for AR Spectacles. Snap CTO Bobby Murphy detailed major software upgrades, lower latency optics, and agentic coding tools designed to turn Spectacles into a serious AR platform. Photo: Snap Snap highlighted a sweeping set of developer updates for its augmented reality Spectacles this week, shifting the focus away from bulky industrial prototypes and squarely onto software infrastructure. Speaking in a session recapped by AWE (Augmented World Expo) Blog, Snap co-founder and chief technology officer Bobby Murphy outlined how recent hardware refinements, native coding frameworks, and AI workflows are intended to accelerate real-world development on Snap OS. On the hardware side, Murphy detailed noticeable improvements underpinning the current fifth-generation Spectacles hardware. According to AWE (Augmented World Expo) Blog, the device's redesigned optical engine is 35 percent more transparent to preserve eye contact, while the displays provide a 30 percent larger active viewing area in a frame assembly that is 40 percent lighter. Crucially for spatial computing comfort, Snap reported that motion-to-photon latency has been cut nearly in half, dropping down to just 7 milliseconds to firmly anchor digital graphics in physical space. The meat of the presentation, however, focused on developer tooling. Murphy pointed out that Snap OS has received 10 major updates introducing 40 new APIs and features over the past 18 months. Powering creation on the desktop is Lens Studio 5.0, which features a rewritten modular engine and native TypeScript support alongside the Spectacles Interaction Kit for gesture and hand tracking. To handle shared experiences, Snap bundled native multiplayer networking and cloud backend support driven by Supabase. A key obstacle for standalone AR headsets has always been migration friction. To lower that hurdle, Snap unveiled a Native Development Kit (NDK) that enables developers to compile existing C and C++ libraries directly for Spectacles. As an example of its speed, AWE (Augmented World Expo) Blog notes that mapping provider Mapbox ported its complete Navigation Engine to the eyewear in under two hours. Snap also introduced an automated Migration Agent to convert Unity project hierarchies directly into Lens Studio assets, as well as a native Commerce Kit for in-lens digital transactions. Snap is also diving into automated software generation. The company demonstrated Closed Loop Agentic Development (CLAD), an agentic AI coding environment tuned specifically to Lens Studio best practices and Snap OS paradigms. The system is designed to let developers prompt, test, and iterate on spatial lenses with minimal manual boilerplate code. What this means: Snap understands that winning augmented reality will not happen on hardware specs alone. While competitors like Meta continue to capture consumer volume with display-free smart audio frames, Snap remains committed to full see-through waveguide AR. By drastically lowering the barrier to port Unity projects and offering native C++ compilation, Snap is giving engineers a practical on-ramp. If developers can bring existing mapping, gaming, and productivity codebases to Snap OS in hours instead of months, Snap stands a real chance of establishing a vibrant software moat long before full-color AR glasses achieve true consumer price points. Interactive guide: prices, displays, cameras, battery.