A U.S. appeals court allowed thousands of federal lawsuits accusing Meta Platforms, Alphabet's Google, ByteDance's TikTok, Snap and other social media companies of designing addictive products for children to go forward, ruling that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act is a defense to liability rather than blanket immunity from being sued. The latest report says more than 3,000 lawsuits have been filed in federal court, compared with earlier descriptions of about 2,400 cases in the multidistrict litigation before U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers in Oakland. Lawyers for school districts and individual plaintiffs said the decision clears the way for the states' trial involving 29 state attorneys general to proceed and for a separate school-district trial scheduled for February. The ruling adds to mounting legal pressure over youth mental-health harms tied to platform design, including a $6 million California verdict over Instagram and YouTube addiction claims, a confidential June settlement between YouTube and a Florida teenager, and New Mexico penalties and platform changes imposed on Meta.