Lawsuit filed by 33 US states alleges Meta knew Facebook and Instagram's 'addictive features harmed young people’s physical and mental health'

28.11.2023 - 22:51 / pcgamer.com

Meta is being sued by the attorneys general of 33 separate US states over allegations that it intentionally created and launched features on its Facebook and Instagram social media platforms that «purposefully addict children and teens.»

«Kids and teenagers are suffering from record levels of poor mental health and social media companies like Meta are to blame,» New York state attorney general Letitia James said 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. Social media companies, including Meta, have contributed to a national youth mental health crisis and they must be held accountable.»

The lawsuit was heavily redacted when it was originally filed in October, but a new «less-redacted» version shared by the state of California reveals some numbers that don't look good for Meta. It alleges that in 2021, for instance, Meta received more than 402,000 reports of under-13 users on Instagram through the platform's reporting process, but acted on fewer than 164,000 of them. 

It also allegedly made active efforts to avoid acting on complaints about underage users: One internal email chain in 2018 referenced in the lawsuit talks about «coaching» parents in order to convince them to allow their children to remain on the platform, while another included a discussion about Meta's failure to delete a 12-year-old girl's four accounts despite complaints from the girl's mother, which the lawsuit says were ignored because employees «couldn't tell for sure the user was underage.»

The lawsuit says Meta's business model is «based on maximizing the time that young users spend on its social media platforms,» and to that end it designed and deployed «psychologically manipulative» features designed to exploit them. At the same time, it promoted those features as specifically not being manipulative, and «routinely published profoundly misleading reports purporting to show impressively low rates of negative and harmful experiences» amongst its users. 

It also allegedly «continued to conceal and downplay» research indicating a range of negative outcomes associated with the use of social media, including its own internal studies, which «reveal that Meta has known for years about the serious harms associated with young users’ time spent on its social media platforms.»

Naturally, allegations of widespread violations of the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA)—the one that cost Epic a whopping half-billion dollars in 2022—are also in the mix: «Meta has marketed and directed its Social Media Platforms to children under the age of 13 and has actual knowledge that