Oakland Students Head Back to School — Without Their Phones, Meta Trial Set to Begin for Getting Kids Addicted to Social Media

From KQED. Cash rules everything around me. When that line dropped, it changed the whole hustle. Introducing the Sprite Living Track List, 50 tracks that shaped the culture from six decades of hip-hop. Scan the QR code on a Sprite or Sprite zero sugar to see the full breakdown. Obey your thirst. Sprite. Hey, I just Venmoed you for rent. Nice. Now I can instantly spend it whether I'm checking out online with Venmo or using a Venmo debit card. Say more. More exactly. Because the more you do with Venmo, the more you get it. Like earning up to 5% cashback with Venmo Stash on a bundle of brands. So, order more pizza. The math demands it. Get the Venmo debit card. Venmo Stash bundle terms and exclusions apply. See terms of Venmo.com.combe. Venmo checkout not available at all merchants. Venmo MasterCard is issued by the Bank Bank N.A. Amazon Health AI presents painful thoughts. I can't stop scratching my downtown. Yeah, but I'm not itching to go downtown and tell a receptionist I'm here to talk about my downtown. Some things you'd rather type than say out loud. There's no question too embarrassing for Amazon Health AI. Chat your symptoms and get virtual care 24-7. Health care just got less painful. From KQED, this is the latest, a podcast that updates throughout the day, bringing you local news when you want it. I'm Dana Cronin. It's Monday, August 10th. Here are this hour's headlines from the KQED Newsroom. The news, I'm Natalia Navarro. Parts of Highway 1 are closed in the Big Sur area as a wildfire forces mandatory evacuations for residents and visitors. KQED's Carly Severn reports that timber fire in Los Padres National Forest is currently around 1,700 acres and only 5% contained. The fire is burning near many of Big Sur's most popular hotels, restaurants and campgrounds, as well as state parks. The Monterey County Sheriff's Office is asking the public to stay out of the area. The Henry Miller Memorial Library, just one of the Big Sur businesses that's been forced to close, also posted to Instagram that it is imploring tourists do not come to Big Sur. However, this year's Monterey Car Week, which draws over 100,000 visitors every year, is still taking place just north of Big Sur through Sunday. I'm Carly Severn, KQWD News. Spirits are high today on the first day of school in Oakland. Parents dropping their kids off at Redwood Heights Elementary this morning expressed hope for the year ahead and support for a new state law requiring districts to restrict or prohibit students' use of smartphones.

Definitely at the high school level, I think it prevents a lot of distractions, a lot of fights that can happen over phones and social media and whatnot. So really, honestly, I think that a no phone policy is really the way to go. If they can uphold the rules of actually doing that at middle school, then yes. I feel like, especially with the social and emotional needs of kids, like not having phones at that age is going to benefit them. Of course, there are concerns for safety. in case something were to happen at school where they needed to utilize their cell phone. However, we're happy that the kids will be less distracted at school and be fully focused. That was parents Sonia Phillips, Heather Jassum, and Chris Connolly. A Catholic high school in the East Bay has taken down its pride flags and introduced a new symbol. Instead, they say, aims to affirm the LGBTQ community. KQED's Katie de Benedetti reports. Bishop O'Dowd High School in Oakland Hills was asked to remove pride flags by the Archdiocese of Oakland last spring. That was after someone brought a flag on campus with pride colors and the colors of the transgender pride flag to the archbishop's attention. School president Kim Walsh says the school engaged LGBTQ plus community members in a year-long process before introducing a new symbol called the Inclusive O. It's a block letter washed in rainbow colors featured on posters and shirts throughout the school. Walsh says it's meant to affirm that queer students are, quote, seen, loved, and belong at Bishop O'Dout. I'm Katie de Benedetti, KQED News. San Jose Mayor Matt Mayhan and other local officials are calling for new guidelines for how data center projects are approved. That includes a proposal to designate a percentage of tax revenues brought in from new facilities to services for neighborhoods in the surrounding areas. San Jose has about 20 data centers, many of them in the city's southern communities. Council member Pamela Compos represents the area and helps draft the proposal. We have a responsibility to ensure that the neighborhoods that are most impacted by the data centers are also first in line to receive some of the material benefits that are going to come to our city. Their proposal comes after months of organizing by residents who are worried about the environmental impacts of data facilities and their impact on the city's electricity grid. San Francisco's public defender is calling on police to take action after a department watchdog found that two officers used excessive force during a 2024 arrest. KQBD's Julie Small reports. Body camera footage from the incident shows one of the officers smashing the driver's window with a baton, opening the door and dragging him out by his hoodie. Within seconds, the officer sprays pepper spray directly into the man's face.

Get down! The officers realized they had the wrong license plate number, but took the driver into custody and impounded his car. The Department of Police accountability found in March that they violated numerous policies during the arrest. Police did not return requests for comment. I'm Julie Small. KQED News. And I'm Natali and Navarro. Here's a deeper dive into the local stories we've been following. Students with the Oakland Unified School District are returning to classrooms today. And starting this school year, all campuses are cell phone-free. KQED's Katie de Benadetti reports. The morning routine at Oakland Unified Schools will look something like this. Elementary school students will put their phones into a locked box, while older students secure theirs in individual pouches that block their access during the school day. Gabriel Kahn teaches at Life Academy in East Oakland. The school piloted the protocol last year. The results were phenomenal. We saw a decrease in school drama. We saw an increase in attention from our students. He says one of the biggest changes was a major decrease in bathroom breaks, where he says students used to check their phones. The district policy meets a statewide mandate to restrict cell phone use on K-12 campuses in light of research showing they distract students and negatively impact mental health. But the change has drawn heavy criticism, as some parents and students worry they won't be able to communicate throughout the day. I think during passing periods or during lunch that... We should be able to have our phones. Blake Rogers is a senior at Oakland Tech High School. She says she understands the desire for less distractions, but she's worried about safety given a recent shooting and other incidents on OUSD campuses. It's really hard to get in contact with people. Without a phone, I think people will be completely left in the dark and that is a scary thing. OUSD's superintendent says students will be able to access their phones in case of an emergency. I'm Katie de Benedetti, KQED News. For years, parents have watched their teenagers retreat behind the screens of cell phones and other devices and worried they're no longer socializing in person. But that's not the full story. A new survey found that more California teens still want to hang out. in real time with real people like we used to do. KQED Health correspondent Leslie McClurg reports. On a warm summer afternoon, teenagers paint simple designs at Alcove Youth Center in San Mateo. 15-year-old Julia Medina dips her brush in orange paint. I chose tulips because my mom really likes them and I want to put them in her office. The event is free and Boba Tea is on tap. Brianna Lynn fills cups and welcomes the kids. So just a space where youth can paint, like, almost like Bob Ross style, and enjoy some boba. Teenagers drift between the art tables and a foosball game. Music videos play on a big screen, bright murals line the walls, all of which were painted by teens. The center is one of 18-year-old Aria Koshchak's favorite places because it's a place where you feel like you truly belong, feeling like you are welcome no matter what.

Finding places like this has been really key to her mental health. Back in middle school, Koshak says she was overwhelmed by anxiety, which was fueled by scrolling on TikTok and Instagram. Hanging out with friends has even become essentially scrolling together, which is pretty sad. More than half of California teens say they're experiencing some degree of loneliness. I think a lot of that... comes from that feeling of not being able to feel like you belong or not being able to feel like you are giving your genuine self based on these norms that we're seeing online of what we should wear, what we should be, how we should speak, how wealthy we should be. And it's, I think, just made people a lot. less confident. That loss of confidence makes it easier to retreat behind screens. Things finally improved for Kashik when she joined a youth mental health nonprofit called Safe Space in Redwood City. I felt like I could really talk about just the scary idea of mental health, anxiety, depression, these kind of scary words for me as a middle schooler. She says the workshops helped, but it was really the casual conversations over shared weekly meals that made the biggest difference. She finally stopped pretending she was okay because her peers were really listening. Being present is such a rare feeling that it almost feels like I'm, you know, unmasking and taking off this like cloak of anxiety and just like being. The new statewide survey finds that nearly 70% of California teens prefer informal unstructured hangouts over organized activities. Between school and sports, jobs, college prep, many teens said they simply don't have time to hang out. And parents interviewed for the survey said they're reluctant to let teens roam the way previous generations did. And when they do, they want to track their kids' location. You know, the teens are really experiencing that a little bit as a leash. Like they want that freedom. They want to feel like they can, you know, do the messy work of adolescents and grow up. Jennifer Heffron ran the survey conducted by the nonprofit California Partners Project, which advocates for kids' mental health. Other teens said their main obstacle to socializing is cost. There's this expectation when they go out that they're going to Sephora or they're going to Starbucks or they're buying Boba. They also want their friends around and to feel safe. That's why Heffron says the best spaces are affordable and often designed with teens, not just for them. And they don't have to be elaborate. Sometimes it's a parked car with friends or maybe a patch of grass outside school. Or for 17-year-old Vihon Bardwage, it's a small library overlooking the ocean in Del Mar. It has these, like, small wooden tables, which are really perfect for working and for studying and for writing. He's not necessarily looking to strike up conversations, but he does crave company. He lives on the outskirts of San Diego County. His neighbors aren't close, and his school is 30 minutes away from home.

and they're squeezing him for everything they got. But we're not going to seed the future and we're not going to sacrifice our children to those policies. Gavin Newsom's office says the state pays half and three participating automakers, Tesla, Hyundai and Lucid so far are matching it. The program will expand to include 10 more participating companies. A U.S. District Court has sided with a coalition of states, including California, in rejecting a Trump administration effort to divert funds away from permanent support of housing. KQED's Christopher Allum reports. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, or HUD, proposed a cap funding for permanent housing projects for homeless people. It wants local governments to prioritize emergency and temporary housing programs instead. But a federal judge on Friday ruled that HUD violated the law by failing to conduct required public notice and comment procedures. California Attorney General Rob Bonta said in the statement that the ruling, quote, protects essential federal funding that helps thousands of vulnerable people stay housed. According to the National Alliance to End Homelessness, nearly 15,000 Californians could lose their housing if the funds were redirected. KQED's Christopher Allum reporting. A Shasta County judge has blocked a number of controversial changes to the election system that voters approved earlier this year. Jefferson Public Radio's Roman Battaglia brings us this report from the courtroom. Judge Benjamin Netanyahu Hanna granted a preliminary injunction Friday morning to stop Shasta County's Measure B from moving forward. The measure would make a number of changes Hannah said were in direct violation of state law, like hand-counting ballots and severely restricting mail-in voting. This ruling is part of a lawsuit the state attorney general filed shortly after the measure passed. Hannah said in his ruling that administration of elections is clearly a state, not county concern. He added that if the measure was implemented now, it would cause a lot of confusion for voters, potentially dissuading them from casting a ballot. Barring an emergency appeals court ruling in the next couple of weeks, Shasta County's November election will be conducted under state law just like the one in June. For the California report, I'm Roman Battaglia in Reading. Jury selection begins Wednesday in Oakland in a federal trial pitting four state attorneys general, including California's against META. The AGs argue the company deliberately engineered addiction into Facebook and Instagram, aimed them at children, and lied to the public about the risks. Rachel Myro, senior editor of KQED's Silicon Valley Newsdesk joins us to talk about the latest big tech trial, one that some analysts say could prove existential for meta. Rachel, bring us up to speed. What's the basic claim and what are the AGs asking for in terms of remedy? First off, this is a consumer protection case, not a personal injury case or a free speech case. The attorneys general are asking for civil penalties and for meta to hand over profits it made from underage users. Now, Alex, in pretrial filings, they've calculated those penalties could run as high as 1.4.

trillion dollars. That's trillion with a T, and that's roughly what META is worth on Wall Street these days. Now, nobody expects that number to survive, but money isn't the only ask. The states also want a court order forcing META to redesign its platforms, to change the features that keep young people scrolling. And what have you seen that... Mehta is saying about all of this in the pretrial filings. Well, Meta has argued, essentially, that social media addiction isn't a real diagnosis, so the company couldn't have lied about something that doesn't exist. It also argued that Facebook and Instagram are not aimed at children particularly, although Meta has recently developed a teen-specific version of Instagram. Judge Yvonne Gonzalez-Rogers in Oakland rejected both arguments before trial. She denied... Meta's motion for summary judgment outright, and she found that children could at least partly be the target of these platforms, sending that question to the jury. On the penalty math, meta lawyers called the trillion dollar figure staggering, and quote, a sanction of that size has no analog in the history of consumer protection enforcement. Wow. Well, this case is one of thousands pending against META and other social media giants lately, right? Yeah, thousands. Individuals school districts and, of course, states it's an onslaught. In March, a Los Angeles jury found META and Google's YouTube liable for negligent design in a case brought by a young woman who said she got hooked on Instagram at age nine. The day before that, a New Mexico jury ordered META to pay $375 million in a separate case about child safety. Meta's appealing both. Meanwhile, in May, it's settled with a Kentucky school district weeks before a trial here in Oakland. And just last month, a... Teenage plaintiff in Los Angeles dropped his case against Metta entirely after the other platforms settled with him. Meta called that suit baseless. So far, two losses, one settlement, one walk away. Well, when does this trial begin? And how long will it last? Opening arguments are August 18. And this is going to be a long one, Alex. The court has blocked out trial days through late September with jury deliberation scheduled to begin. October 1st. So let's call it six and a half weeks. One key wrinkle, this is an advisory jury. They'll weigh in on penalties, but Judge Gonzalez Rogers makes the final call. It should be interesting. Rachel, thank you so much. Thank you. That was Rachel Myro, senior editor of KQED's Silicon Valley Newsdesk. And that's the California report for Monday, August 10th. We're a production of KQED News. I'm Alex Hall. Thanks for listening and have a great day.

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