Dozens of US states, including California and New York, have signed Meta Platforms Inc. charged with harming young people and contributing to the youth mental health crisis by knowingly designing features on Instagram and Facebook that addict children to their platforms.
A lawsuit filed by 33 states in federal court in California alleges that Meta routinely collects data about children under the age of 13 without parental consent, in violation of federal law. In addition, nine attorneys general are filing lawsuits in their respective states, bringing the total number of states taking action to 41 and Washington, DC.
“Meta has deployed powerful and unprecedented technologies to entice, engage and ultimately ensnare young people and teens. The motive is profit, and in its efforts to maximize its financial gains, Meta has repeatedly misled the public about the substantial dangers of its social media platforms,” the complaint states. “It has hidden the ways in which these platforms exploit and manipulate the most vulnerable consumers: teens and children.”
The lawsuits seek financial damages and restitution and an end to Meta’s practices that violate the law.
“Children and teens are suffering from record levels of poor mental health, and social media companies like Meta are to blame,” New York Attorney General Letitia James said in a statement. “Meta has profited from children’s pain by deliberately designing its platforms with manipulative features that addict children to their platforms while decreasing their self-esteem.”
In a statement, Meta said it “shares the attorneys general’s commitment to providing teens with safe, positive experiences online, and has already introduced more than 30 tools to support teens and their families.”
“We are disappointed that instead of working productively with companies across the industry to create clear, age-appropriate standards for the many apps teens use, the attorneys general have chosen this path,” the company added to it.
The broad federal lawsuit is the result of an investigation led by a bipartisan coalition of attorneys general from California, Florida, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Nebraska, New Jersey, Tennessee and Vermont. It follows scathing newspaper reports, first by The Wall Street Journal in the fall of 2021, based on Meta’s own research that found the company was aware of the harm Instagram can do to teenagers – especially teenage girls – when it comes to mental health and the body. image problems. An internal survey found that 13.5% of teen girls say Instagram makes suicidal thoughts worse, while 17% of teen girls say it makes eating disorders worse.
After the initial reports, a consortium of news organizations, including The Associated Press, published their own findings based on leaked documents from whistleblower Frances Haugen, who has testified before Congress and a British parliamentary committee about what she found.
“Meta has harmed our children and teens and cultivated addiction to increase corporate profits,” said California Attorney General Rob Bonta. “We draw the line with today’s lawsuit.”
Social media use among teens is nearly universal in the United States and many other parts of the world. Nearly all teens ages 13 to 17 in the U.S. use a social media platform, with about a third saying they use social media “almost constantly,” according to the Pew Research Center.
To comply with federal regulations, social media companies prohibit children under the age of 13 from signing up for their platforms. But it has been found that children can easily get around these bans, both with and without their parents’ permission, and many younger children have social media accounts. The states’ complaint alleges that Meta knowingly violated that law, the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, by collecting information about children without notifying their parents and obtaining consent.
Other measures that social platforms have taken to address concerns about children’s mental health can also be easily circumvented. For example, TikTok recently introduced a default time limit of 60 minutes for users under 18. But once the limit is reached, minors can simply enter a passcode to keep watching. TikTok, Snapchat and other social platforms also accused of contributing to the youth mental health crisis are not part of Tuesday’s lawsuit.
Washington DC Attorney General Brian Schwalb would not say whether they also look at TikTok or Snapchat. For now, they’re focusing on the Meta empire of Facebook and Instagram, he said.
“They are the worst of the worst when it comes to using technology to get teenagers hooked on social media, all to put profits before people.”
In May, U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy urges technology companies, parents and caregivers to “take immediate action to protect children now” from the harms of social media.
This story was reported by The Associated Press. AP writers Michael Casey, Michael Goldberg, Susan Haigh, Maysoon Khan and Ashraf Khalil contributed to this story.