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‘It entices, engages, ensnares’: What the lawsuit against Meta platforms by 33 US states means
American states sue Meta Platforms for harming young people and contributing to mental health crisis
Dozens of American states on Tuesday sued Meta Platforms, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, for harming young people and contributing to the mental health crisis among young users by knowingly and deliberately designing features that addict children to its platforms.
According to the lawsuit filed by 33 states in a court in California, Meta routinely collects data on children under 13 without their parents’ consent, in violation of US law. Separately, nine states are expected to file local lawsuits, bringing the total number of states taking action to 41 and Washington, DC.
The social media giant has also been accused of designing its platforms with “manipulative features” that thrive on lowering the self-esteem of the children.
The suit finds its genesis in a whistleblower’s release of documents in 2021, and is the latest among the trend of growing scrutiny by policymakers across the world of social media giants in particular, and Big Tech in general.
The allegations against Meta
Primarily, the joint lawsuit alleges that Meta has repeatedly misled the public about the “substantial dangers” of its platforms, particularly to children and young adults, for economic gains.
“Meta has harnessed powerful and unprecedented technologies to entice, engage, and ultimately ensnare youth and teens. Its motive is profit, and in seeking to maximize its financial gains, Meta has repeatedly misled the public about the substantial dangers of its social media platforms,” the complaint says. “It has concealed the ways in which these platforms exploit and manipulate its most vulnerable consumers: teenagers and children.”
The suits seek financial damages and restitution, and an end to Meta’s practices that are in violation of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act. The Act gives parents control over what information websites can collect from their kids.
“Kids and teenagers are suffering from record levels of poor mental health and social media companies like Meta are to blame,” said New York Attorney General Letitia James in a statement. “Meta has profited from children’s pain by intentionally designing its platforms with manipulative features that make children addicted to their platforms while lowering their self-esteem.”
“Meta has been harming our children and teens, cultivating addiction to boost corporate profits,” said California Attorney General Rob Bonta. “With today’s lawsuit, we are drawing the line.”
In response, Meta said it was “disappointed” in the lawsuit. It said in a statement that it shares “the attorneys general’s commitment to providing teens with safe, positive experiences online, and have already introduced over 30 tools to support teens and their families”.
“We’re disappointed that instead of working productively with companies across the industry to create clear, age-appropriate standards for the many apps teens use, the attorney generals have chosen this path,” the company added.
Genesis of these claims
The broad-ranging federal suit is the result of an investigation led by a bipartisan coalition of attorney generals and follows a string of damning news reports in 2021 based on documents produced by a whistleblower.
These reports were then labelled “Facebook Files” by the media.
The news reports, first by The Wall Street Journal in 2021, were based on Meta’s own research which found that the company knew about the harms Instagram can cause teenagers – particularly teen girls – when it comes to mental health and body image issues.
One of its internal studies found that 13.5% of teen girls said Instagram made suicidal thoughts worse, and 17% of teen girls said it made eating disorders worse.
After the initial reports, a consortium of news organisations published their own findings based on leaked documents from whistleblower Frances Haugen, who has since testified before Congress and a British parliamentary committee about what her findings. Haugen, a former product manager at the company, came forward after she saw senior company officials repeatedly “prioritise profit over safety” of its users.
She said that before quitting the company in May 2021, she combed through the company’s internal network, and compiled internal documents and reports that showed that the social media giant had deliberately chosen to overlook the issues.
ALSO READ: Mark Zuckerberg's Meta faces lawsuit in UK over its ‘surveillance advertising’ business model
The bigger picture
The cases are the latest in a string of legal actions against social media companies on behalf of children and teens, who have long been an appealing demographic for businesses.
The tech giants, meanwhile, hope to attract them as consumers at ages when they may be more impressionable, and solidify brand loyalty. In Meta’s case, younger consumers may help secure more advertisers who hope children will keep buying their products as they grow up.
The use of social media among teens is nearly universal. Almost all teens aged 13 to 17 in the US report using 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 regulation, social media companies ban kids under 13 from signing up to their platforms – but children have been shown to easily get around the bans, both with and without their parents’ consent, and many younger kids have social media accounts. The states’ complaint says Meta knowingly violated this US law (Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act) by collecting data on children without informing and getting permission from their parents.
Other measures social platforms have taken to address concerns about children’s mental health are also easily circumvented. For instance, TikTok recently introduced a default 60-minute time limit 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 that have also been blamed for contributing to the youth mental health crisis are not part of Tuesday’s lawsuit.
Later this week, a court California will hear similar allegations against the wider tech industry. Meta, ByteDance’s TikTok and Google’s YouTube already face hundreds of lawsuits filed on behalf of children and school districts about the addictiveness of social media.
In May, US Surgeon General Dr Vivek Murthy called on tech companies, parents and caregivers to take “immediate action to protect kids now” from the harms of social media.
These lawsuits, and how they play out, will clearly end up deciding the future of social media regulations not just in the US, but the world over.
