Young woman says she was on social media ‘all day long’ as a child in landmark addiction trial

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A young woman who is battling against social media giants took the stand Thursday to testify about her experience using the platforms as she was growing up, saying she was on social media “all day long” as a child.

The now 20-year-old, who has been identified in court documents as KGM, says her early use of social media addicted her to the technology and exacerbated depression and suicidal thoughts. Meta and YouTube are the two remaining defendants in the case, which TikTok and Snap have settled.

The case, along with two others, has been selected as a bellwether trial, meaning its outcome could impact how thousands of similar lawsuits against social media companies are likely to play out.

KGM, or Kaley, as her lawyers have called her during the trial, started using YouTube at age 6 and Instagram at age 9.

New football chinstrap designed to lessen force of blows to facemask

Erin Hanson wants to make taking it on the chin in football much safer in Canada.

Guardian Sports officially launched the Guardian Flex chinstrap on Thursday for individual and team sale, with the CFL being among the leagues to have reviewed the item. The product has been engineered to reduce the impact of blows to the facemask.

According to the company, the chinstrap reduces Head Acceleration Response Metric (HARM) scores by up to 35 per cent and targets facemask impacts, which research suggests account for about half of all hits and are an area where traditional helmets underperform.

The chinstrap will be far less noticeable to fans than the Atlanta-based company’s Guardian Cap. Introduced 14 years ago, the soft padded shell fits over a football helmet and is secured by elastic straps attached to the facemask.

Councillor calls for permanent bike lanes on Wellington stretch

The chair of Winnipeg’s public works committee wants the city to scrap plans for temporary bike lanes on part of Wellington Crescent and immediately proceed with a permanent protected route.

Coun. Janice Lukes wants permanent lanes to be installed in 2027 if her proposal is approved, although some proponents worry there will be more delays if plans change for a road they consider unsafe.

“I know this is frustrating and it’s challenging, but we’ve got the money — move it up and let’s just do it right the first time,” Lukes told reporters.

The city on Wednesday published a staff report and design for temporary lanes on a one-kilometre section between Academy Road and Stradbrook Avenue, after getting public input on a proposed $436,000 pilot project.

AI chatbots and teens — a sometimes deadly combination

As if there weren’t enough concerns about the changes artificial intelligence may bring in the future — the displacement of millions of workers, or the potential for AI to disconnect from its human managers and go its own way — there are clear and present dangers which AI companies must be forced to address now.

‘We need to act,’ health minister says as Canada seeks feedback on men’s health

OTTAWA - Canada needs to take action to improve the health of men and boys, Health Minister Marjorie Michel said Monday as she launched an online consultation to inform a national strategy.

Michel made the announcement in Ottawa with MPs from other parties in attendance. She said the government's approach to the issue must be non-partisan and the solutions will require co-operation among governments and community organizations.

The federal government is seeking feedback from people across the country through an online consultation that will run from March 2 to June 1.

"We invite everyone, and especially men, to participate in this important conversation," she said.

She woke up to ‘We’re at war’ in Ukraine. Now Mariia Vainshtein is a New York City tennis champion

NEW YORK (AP) — Mariia Vainshtein never heard the noise and slept straight through that horrible night four years ago.

She didn’t have her phone near bed when she woke the next morning — it probably had been taken by her parents for some teenager's misbehavior, she suspects now with a laugh – so couldn’t scroll around for the news of the day. Instead, she just asked her mother when she could get a ride to school.

Anzhelika Kotliantseva knew they weren’t going anywhere in Ukraine that day. Not after she had been awake for hours, listening to the nearby explosions that began when Russia launched its invasion.

“My mom was like, ’What do you mean? We’re at war! There’s no school, no nothing!'" Vainshtein said.

Social media companies face legal reckoning over mental health harms to children

For years, social media companies have disputed allegations that they harm children’s mental health through deliberate design choices that addict kids to their platforms and fail to protect them from sexual predators and dangerous content. Now, these tech giants are getting a chance to make their case in courtrooms around the country, including before a jury for the first time.

Some of the biggest players from Meta to TikTok are facing federal and state trials that seek to hold them responsible for harming children's mental health. The lawsuits have come from school districts, local, state and the federal government as well as thousands of families.

Two trials are now underway in Los Angeles and in New Mexico, with more to come. The courtroom showdowns are the culmination of years of scrutiny of the platforms over child safety, and whether deliberate design choices make them addictive and serve up content that leads to depression, eating disorders or suicide.

Experts see the reckoning as reminiscent of cases against tobacco and opioid markets, and the plaintiffs hope that social media platforms will see similar outcomes as cigarette makers and drug companies, pharmacies and distributors.

Making the most of Winnipeg’s biggest opportunity

The critical moral test for any community is the world it leaves for its children.

Without a doubt, Winnipeggers want all their city’s young people to have successful lives. Here are things we know make success possible: graduating from high school and avoiding disasters like addiction to drugs, teen pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases and becoming involved with the criminal justice system.

Most citizens understand this. And if they were told there are proven ways to make it much more likely for our wishes for Winnipeg’s young people to come true, they would probably say “Hey, let’s do more of that!”

But mostly, we don’t.

‘Anti-social’ dancer fell in love with metal, ‘community’ at WECC

Dammecia Hall is an artist, and for her that means spending a lot of time by herself.

“I’m extremely anti-social,” says the dancer, choreographer and educator. “But as soon as you put me in a social environment, I come alive.”

One of the social environments Hall finds herself in these days is the West End Cultural Centre, the non-profit performance venue inside a former church at the corner of Ellice Avenue and Sherbrook Street.

While attending an event at the WECC, a friend of a friend encouraged Hall to volunteer at the venue. The 43-year-old Wolseley resident applied soon after, and has been volunteering at the WECC for more than a year.

Food-culture extremes reverberate back to farm

The absurdity of our civilization’s extreme relationship with food hit me like a runaway snowboard the other night while watching the Ozempic Olympics in between commercials advertising pizza and french fries.

The relentless marketing, alternately promoting weight-loss support and foods that lean towards making us fat, isn’t aimed at the elite winter athletes strutting their stuff on the world stage in Italy. It’s a safe bet they didn’t achieve the peak of human fitness on a diet of pizza and french fries. It’s equally doubtful they require injections of the GLP-1 class of drugs to help manage their weight.

These athletes deserve our admiration and respect, but to be fair to the rest of us, most working stiffs don’t have the time, drive or resources to devote full-time to the pursuit of extreme fitness.

No, those commercials are aimed at the couch potatoes back home, subjecting us to both temptation and a shortcut to redemption as we bear witness to these feats of human endurance.

‘Looksmaxxing’ hammers home a new standard of attractiveness

‘Pain is beauty” is not a new concept. Guys hitting themselves in the face with hammers? That’s new.

Movement, proper sleep crucial for brain health

Winter in Winnipeg has a way of forcing us indoors.

Short days. Long nights. More sitting. More screens. Less movement. More “I’ll get back on track in spring.”

That seasonal slowdown doesn’t just stiffen joints and pad waistlines. It quietly affects the brain, too.

When most people think about Alzheimer’s or dementia, they picture something that shows up late in life — 70s, 80s, maybe a parent or grandparent.

Relationship with city’s icy waterways warms many a Winnipegger’s heart

In summer, a screened porch or gazebo adds another room to Winnipeg houses, full of light and fresh air.

A balcony in a high-rise apartment seems to double the horizon available to residents: it feels like you could step out into the branches of a big old elm or a cottonwood, full of birds.

In the same way, the frozen Assiniboine, Red and Seine rivers add concert hall- and football stadium-sized swathes of space to the city.

The iced-over rivers provide new ways of seeing and understanding this place we call home.

More Canadian athletes powered by artificial intelligence at Winter Games

Just for fun, Xavier McKeever and his cross-country ski teammates once tasked ChatGPT to design a training plan for them.

"It was the craziest training plan we've ever seen," said the 22-year-old from Canmore, Alta.

"It basically said you should do intensity every single day. You should do three hours of skiing and then an hour of intensity, and repeat that a few times -- and then you should take a week off completely. We know you can't do that.

"It was pretty funny to see and do, to see Chat GPT can't write a training plan, and that we need our coaching to help us with that."

Get vaccinated for flu, COVID-19, measles to protect crowded hospitals: top doc

The province’s top doctor is asking Manitobans to get vaccinated as respiratory virus season threatens to strain hospitals and measles outbreaks tear though parts of Manitoba.

Newcomers to Canada take skating lessons at camp in Headingley

Abenezer Massore has newfound respect and admiration for the Olympians who are lacing up to compete in Milano Cortina.

The 15-year-old newcomer is no stranger to sports; he grew up swimming and playing soccer and basketball in South Africa.

But he said he had no idea just how challenging it would be to learn to stay upright on skates — one of his bucket list items — for the first time.

“It’s a lot harder than it looks; I have terrible balance,” Abenezer said during an outing to Camp Manitou in Headingley on Sunday.

West Broadway winter carnival sets the standard, says volunteer

Children and adults in West Broadway celebrated winter with games, skating and even horses on Saturday.

The 22nd annual West Broadway Snoball Winter Carnival brought dozens of area residents together both outdoors and indoors at the centre and park just south of Broadway at Young Street.

“It is definitely a joyful activity,” Kelly Frazer, executive director of the West Broadway Community Organization, said on Saturday.

“Winter can be isolating for people. We want people to get out and see their neighbours and enjoy their time. This is a great event because everything is free. You can come and ride in the horse-drawn carriages, you can get a good meal, you can play lots of games, and everything is free.”

Predator used Snapchat to lure children for sexual abuse; girls struggling now, court told

A Winnipeg man who used the social media app Snapchat to lure his young victims into having unprotected sex with him filmed some of the encounters.

Low/no alcohol drinks officially a movement

An increasing number of lounges and eateries are offering more (and more innovative) mocktails, as well as alcohol-free beers and wines. The number of dealcoholized options at grocery stores, beer vendors, Liquor Marts and the like has never been higher. In short, the low/no-alc phenomenon is here to stay.

Donning the vest: Young crossing guards take up safety tradition

Georgia Donachuk and the rest of her all-girls squad have given up their lunch hour for the greater good.

Equipped with flags, vests and, at this time of year, lots of layers, five girls can be found scanning the perimeter of Isaac Brock School on weekdays.

What motivates them to clock in daily for the 12:30 p.m. shift, even when it’s -25 C?

“I like keeping people safe when they cross the street,” Georgia, 10, said after shedding her CAA vest and hanging it on a hook in her school’s front lobby on a recent weekday. “Also, every time we go out, we see a cat!”

Attention-grabbing screens demean us, bit by bit

The first time I read Oryx and Crake, Canadian author Margaret Atwood’s haunting dystopic novel, I couldn’t put it down. I devoured it in just days, engrossed by the fictional world Atwood wove from the most discomfiting new threads of our own.

Over the years, I returned to the book many times, always finding new depth in its pages. Each time, I finished it at the same brisk pace. I was a fast reader as a child, and for most of my life, that didn’t change.

Until now. In November, as part of an effort to calm my restless mind, I put Oryx and Crake on my nightstand, and made a pledge to myself to read a little bit every night. This time, it’s been over two months, and I’ve made it through only 92 pages.

It would be easy to say I’ve been too busy, but that would be a lie. I’ve had time to read. The problem is now, unlike when the book came out in 2003, I struggle to read more than a page without checking my phone quickly; and checking it once means falling into the chasm of raw content the internet has become.

Glacial glamping: Riding Mountain woos in winter

As they say, it was so cold it’d freeze the nuts off an iron bridge. Margie and I slept in a prospector-style tent, or what Riding Mountain National Park calls an “oTENTik,” at -39 C.

Province hunting for web-based system to better assess and help youth with mental-health, addiction issues

As a drug crisis rages in Manitoba, the province is looking for a better web-based mental-health and addictions assessment tool for youth to help connect them to the services they need.

Shared Health said it’s seeking an evidence-based assessment system that focuses on mental health and substance use challenges in youth. On Monday, it posted on the public-sector tendering site MERX that it’s looking for systems and tools that are secure and ready to go.

A spokesperson for Shared Health said the authority is trying to determine whether there are any stronger screening tools and digital platforms than what is currently in use. The Manitoba Advocate for Children and Youth has sounded the alarm over substance use among children and youth, and the need for the province to do more and better.

Shared Health currently has a screening tool and digital platform — the Child Behavior Checklist and the Achenbach System of Empirically Based Assessment (ASEBA-Web), the spokesperson said.

Open AI, Microsoft face lawsuit over ChatGPT’s alleged role in Connecticut murder-suicide

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — The heirs of an 83-year-old Connecticut woman are suing ChatGPT maker OpenAI and its business partner Microsoft for wrongful death, alleging that the artificial intelligence chatbot intensified her son's “paranoid delusions” and helped direct them at his mother before he killed her.

Police said Stein-Erik Soelberg, 56, a former tech industry worker, fatally beat and strangled his mother, Suzanne Adams, and killed himself in early August at the home where they both lived in Greenwich, Connecticut.

The lawsuit filed by Adams' estate on Thursday in California Superior Court in San Francisco alleges OpenAI “designed and distributed a defective product that validated a user’s paranoid delusions about his own mother.” It is one of a growing number of wrongful death legal actions against AI chatbot makers across the country.

“Throughout these conversations, ChatGPT reinforced a single, dangerous message: Stein-Erik could trust no one in his life — except ChatGPT itself," the lawsuit says. “It fostered his emotional dependence while systematically painting the people around him as enemies. It told him his mother was surveilling him. It told him delivery drivers, retail employees, police officers, and even friends were agents working against him. It told him that names on soda cans were threats from his ‘adversary circle.’”