Court document claims Meta knowingly designed its platforms to hook kids, reports say

SAN FRANCISO– Facebook parent company Meta Platforms purposefully designed its social platforms to engage children and knew — but never disclosed — that it had received millions of complaints about underage users on Instagram but had disabled only a fraction of those accounts, according to a recent unveiled legal complaint detailed in reports by The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times.

The complaint, which was originally made public in redacted form, was the opening salvo in a lawsuit filed in late October by the attorneys general of 33 states.

According to the reports, Meta said in a statement that the complaint misrepresents its work over the past decade to make the online experience safe for teens and that it does not design its products to be addictive for younger users. Meta did not immediately comment on the unredacted complaint after a request from The Associated Press.

Company documents cited in the complaint describe several Meta officials acknowledging that the company designed its products to exploit flaws in youth psychology, such as impulsive behavior, sensitivity to peer pressure and underestimating risk, the reports said. Others acknowledged that Facebook and Instagram were also popular with children under 13, who were not allowed to use the service under company policy.

A Facebook safety manager alluded in a 2019 email to the possibility that a crackdown on younger users could hurt the company’s business, the Journal report said. But a year later, the same executive expressed frustration that while Facebook readily studied the use of underage users for business reasons, it did not show the same enthusiasm for ways to identify and remove younger children from its platforms.

The complaint noted that Meta sometimes has a backlog of as many as 2.5 million accounts belonging to younger children waiting for action, according to the reports.