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Two years ago, a brave woman named Frances Haugen came forward to blow the whistle on her former employer, Meta. Her tale as old as time was that Meta deliberately chooses profit over everything else, including users’ safety and mental health. Among the things she revealed were that Facebook changed its algorithm in 2018 to become more politically divisive, leading it to help stoke the fires that led to the Jan. 6 insurrection, and that they knew through internal research that Instagram could have negative effects on users, especially young users.
On Tuesday, a total of 41 state attorneys general filed lawsuits against Meta, alleging that Instagram and Facebook are knowingly harmful to young people’s mental health and designed to be addictive. The group was bipartisan and the states have been investigating Meta since Haugen’s allegations in 2021. 33 states filed one big suit and eight additional states filed individual ones. In addition to deliberately designing Instagram and Facebook features to addict children to its platforms, the lawsuits also claim that Meta regularly collects data on children under 13 without their parents’ consent, which violates federal law.
“Meta has harnessed powerful and unprecedented technologies to entice, engage, and ultimately ensnare youth and teens,” the complaint, filed Tuesday from 33 states in an Oakland, Calif., federal court, said, according to Reuters. Eight states, including Washington D.C., filed separately, The Washington Post reported.
With features like infinite scroll and notifications, sites like Instagram are deliberately designed to keep young people engaged — and coming back for more, the AGs charge in their lawsuit, CNBC says.
Meta’s “motive is profit,” alleges the lawsuit, which seeks civil penalties, among other consequences, for Mark Zuckerberg’s behemoth social media company. This past May, United States Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy issued a landmark advisory regarding the impact of social media, saying that it can “have a profound risk of harm to the mental health and well-being of children and adolescents.”
“In early adolescence, when identities and sense of self-worth are forming, brain development is especially susceptible to social pressures, peer opinions and peer comparison,” the advisory said. “Our children have become unknowing participants in a decades-long experiment.”
According to another lawsuit in March, Meta’s product teams were actively trying to increase the number of times people accessed their platforms. In that filing, the Los Angeles Times reported that one Meta employee wrote “No one wakes up thinking they want to maximize the number of times they open Instagram that day…But that’s exactly what our product teams are trying to do.”
The March lawsuit also claimed that Meta chief Zuckerberg was personally warned about social media’s negative impacts on children.
While both Facebook and Instagram’s terms of service dictate that someone must be at least 13 years old before signing up for an account, the new lawsuit also alleges that Meta collected personal data from children under 13 without parental consent, which violates the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), CNBC reports.
It’s so infuriating. I don’t know what to say other than Meta is bad. F– them. I just finished watching The Fall of the House of Usher, and right now I am in a whole mood about big corporations and the evil people running them who only care about making money. (BTW, it’s a fantastic series, and I am dying to talk about it.) Anyway, I largely decreased my presence on Facebook in 2020 because seeing family, friends, and neighbors spread Covid lies (remember “plandemic,” ugh?) and worship Trump was making me physically ill. It really took a toll on my mental health, so I bowed out. I go through phases with Instagram, but I know a lot of people in my age group that now use that as their primary form of social media.
I absolutely see how both platforms are addictive, though, especially to children. Last week, I talked about how we have to strictly limit my kids’ screen time because of how it affects their behavior. Kids are so impressionable, too, which makes what Meta is doing all the more despicable. It’s just like how Phillip Morris inserted cigarettes into tv and movies, Meta is doing the same, adjusted for 2023 vices. My older son will actively quote advertisements and commercials he sees when he plays games or watches YouTube. Just this evening, when I muted commercials during Survivor he protested. I did one of those, “Back in my day, commercials were annoying and streaming media services want to now charge us more by enticing us with ad-free versions of things!” But as the words left my mouth, the Travis Kelce Pfizer commercial aired, and it felt like the Universe Raven (IFKYK) was mocking me. All jokes aside, I think we’ve all seen firsthand just how addictive social media can be for grown-ups. It is great to keep up with/let people know what’s going on with you in a blanketed way. We enjoy how we feel when we see that someone has liked, or commented on our social media posts, but just like most vices that doesn’t mean it’s good for us. It’s absolutely f–ing disgusting that these corporations would target children just so they can ensnare a whole new generation of customers. I hope they burn.
Today is history in the making. 80% of the states in the US are banding together to sue for safer social media for our children. ???? I’m in DC and Boston this week – happy to comment or provide context on this giant leap forward in tech accountability.https://t.co/FiiyzRQ3kV
— Frances Haugen (@FrancesHaugen) October 24, 2023
