Social media giant Meta, Mark Zuckerberg’s company which owns Facebook and Instagram, is being sued by dozens of states including California, Illinois and New York for accelerating mental illness among the nation’s youth with its implementation of addictive technologies on its apps.
A bipartisan group of 33 attorneys general filed a complaint against Meta in federal court on Oct. 24.
Meta “has harnessed powerful and unprecedented technologies to entice, engage, and ultimately ensnare youth and teens,” the plaintiffs argue in a 233-page complaint.
The company’s exploitation of technology, including algorithms, visual filters, and constant addictive alerts are among features incorporated on its apps that are demonstrably designed to prey on young users and even prime body dysmorphia among youth, state attorneys general argued.
“To maximize profit, Meta’s business model focuses on increasing young users’ engagement. Meta monetizes young users’ attention through data harvesting and targeted advertising,” the lawsuit states. “Meta knows its Platform features are addictive and harmful, but
misrepresents and omits this information in public discourse.”
Plaintiffs detail in the suit a litany of and techniques and tools Meta is employing to keep users reliant on its platforms to their detriment.
According to the largely redacted 233-page complaint:
Meta falsely represents that its Social Media Platform features are safe and not designed to induce young users’ compulsive and extended use. Meta represents to the public that its Social Media Platforms are designed to support young users’ well-being.
Meta promotes Platform features such as visual filters known to promote eating disorders and body dysmorphia in youth.
Meta’s use of disruptive audiovisual and haptic notifications interferes with young users’ education and sleep.
Meta prioritizes maximizing engagement over young users’ safety.
Meta offers features that it claims promote connection between friends, but actually serve to increase young users’ time spent on the Platform.
Content-presentation formats, such as “infinite scroll,” designed to discourage young users’ attempts to self-regulate and disengage with Meta’s products.
The attorneys general argue the use of Meta’s platforms induce suicide ideation, correlating the skyrocketing percentage of highschool students “who exerienced persistent feelings of sadness or hoplessness” to the rise in Instagram’s popularity. .
“In 2008, prior to the rise of Instagram, hospital visits for suicidal ideation and attempts represented only 0.66% of visits among all ranges. By 2015, as Instagram’s popularity grew, that share had almost doubled, with suicidal ideation and attempts accounting for 1.82% of all visit, with the highest rates of increase among yout ages 12 to 17 years old,” the plaintiffs state, citing figures from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention.
While promoting and exacerbating mental illness amongst youth is lucrative, the tactics Meta is using to target young people is illegal, the attorney’s general contend.
“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. It has concealed the ways in which these platforms exploit and manipulate its most vulnerable consumers: teenagers and children,” the suit states. “And it has ignored the sweeping damage these platforms have caused to the mental and physical health of our nation’s youth. In doing so, Meta engaged in, and continues to engage in, deceptive and unlawful conduct in violation of state and federal law.”
Attorney General Matt Platkin of New Jersey issued a statement after the lawsuit, warning, Meta “is harming our children, and we refuse to tolerate it any longer.”
.@Meta is harming our children, and we refuse to tolerate it any longer. Today, NJ is co-leading dozens of states suing Meta in federal court to hold it accountable for deceptive business practices designed to cause kids to become addicted to social media. https://t.co/bOzNdVIFsd pic.twitter.com/DhvM65j4el
— Attorney General Matt Platkin (@NewJerseyOAG) October 24, 2023
A Meta spokesperson maintains Meta is committed to protecting its users.
“We share the attorneys general’s commitment to providing teens with safe, positive experiences online, and have already introduced more than 30 tools to support teens and their families,” the spokesperson said. “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 attorneys general have chosen this path.”
Last week, Gallup and the Institute for Family Studies published data showcasing the declining mental health of teenagers among teenagers who frequently use social media.
According to the research brief, teens who spend more than five hours a day on social media are 60 percent more likely to suffer from suicidal ideation and have thoughts of harming themselves. Young social media users are also 2.4 times more vulnerable to suffering from negative views of their body and 40 percent more likely to feel depressed.
Alicia Powe
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