SAN FRANCISCO: Dozens of US states on Tuesday filed a lawsuit accusing Facebook and Instagram owner Meta of profiting "from children's pain," damaging their mental health and misleading the public over the safety of its platforms.
"In seeking to maximize its financial gains, Meta has repeatedly misled the public about the substantial dangers of its Social Media Platforms," argued the suit filed in federal court in California.
In total more than 40 states are suing Meta, though some opted to file in local courts rather than join in the federal case.
Meta has exploited young users by creating a business model designed to maximize the time they spend on the platform despite harm to their health, the legal filing argued.
"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 announcing the suit.
"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."
The suit goes on to accuse Meta of misleading the public about the safety of its platforms, including a Horizon World virtual reality offering that is part of the tech titan's vision of the metaverse.
The suit urges the federal court to order Meta to stop manipulative tactics and pay hefty financial penalties along with restitution, according to James.
"Social media companies, including Meta, have contributed to a national youth mental health crisis and they must be held accountable," James said.
Meta said it was "disappointed" by the suit.
“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," a 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."
The broad-ranging suit 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 damning newspaper reports, first by The Wall Street Journal in the fall of 2021, based on Meta's own research that found that the company knew about the harms Instagram can cause teenagers — especially teen girls — when it comes to mental health and body image issues.
One internal study cited 13.5 per cent of teen girls saying Instagram makes thoughts of suicide worse and 17 per cent of teen girls saying it makes eating disorders worse.
Following the first 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.
The use of social media among teens is nearly universal in the US and many other parts of the world. Up to 95 per cent of youth ages 13 to 17 in the US report using a social media platform, with more than 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.
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.
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.
(With inputs from AFP and AP)
