A group of dozens of states including Arizona is suing Meta Platforms Inc. for harming young people’s mental health and contributing to the youth mental health crisis by knowingly designing features on Instagram and Facebook that addict children to its platforms.
“There is a youth mental health crisis in America fueled by social media use, particularly young people’s extensive and compulsive use of Meta’s platforms such as Instagram and Facebook. This ongoing catastrophe has ended lives, devastated families, and damaged the potential of our nation’s youth,” said Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes in a press release Tuesday morning. “Meta not only ignored the well-being of young users but deliberately misled the public, claiming their platforms were safe. By violating consumer protection laws and federal privacy standards, they've put the mental health and well-being of an entire generation at risk. Meta must be held accountable for its irresponsible and damaging actions.”
The lawsuit filed in federal court in California also claims that Meta routinely collects data on children under 13 without their parents' consent, in violation of federal law.
"The features of Instagram and Facebook that are clearly designed to hook kids, to addict kids and that clearly harms their mental health. We want to stop those features and we want these companies to stop lying to the American public." said Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes.
Schools have been warning of the impacts social media has on students for years. Currently 600 school districts across the country, including 10 in Arizona, are suing social media companies over their impact on student mental health. Bullying to body shaming, Ruth Fisher Middle School principal Matt Dobesh told ABC 15 in September it's hard to stop. "They say stuff, do mean things that they would never do any other time or place."
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% of teen girls saying Instagram makes thoughts of suicide worse and 17% 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 U.S. and many other parts of the world. Up to 95% of youth ages 13 to 17 in the U.S. 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.
The attorney general's office said Tuesday "the multistate coalition that brought today’s complaint is also investigating TikTok’s conduct on a similar set of concerns."
In May, U.S. 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.
