Citing youth mental health suffering, Mass. and other states sue Meta

Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Campbell is suing Meta, the conglomerate that operates Facebook and Instagram, saying the company is harming young people’s mental health by deliberately designing features that addict children to its platforms.

Campbell said she would file suit in Suffolk Superior Court, charging the company with violating state consumer protection laws. She joined dozens of attorneys general across the country who announced Tuesday they were filing suit against the company.

“Because Meta has shown that it will not act responsibly unless it is required to do so by courts of law, my colleagues and I are taking action today — and will continue to push for meaningful changes to Meta’s platforms that protect our young people,” Campbell said in a statement.

A lawsuit filed by 33 states in federal court in California, claims that Meta routinely violates federal law by collecting data on children under 13 without their parents' consent. At least nine attorneys general are filing lawsuits in their respective states. In all, 41 states and Washington, D.C. have sued the company in either state or federal court.

“Meta has harnessed powerful and unprecedented technologies to entice, engage, and ultimately ensnare youth and teens. 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,” the complaint said. “It has concealed the ways in which these platforms exploit and manipulate its most vulnerable consumers: teenagers and children.”

The suits seek financial damages and restitution, as well as an end to any of Meta's practices that violate law.

“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. “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."

In a statement, Meta said it shares “the attorneys general’s commitment to providing teens with safe, positive experiences online, and have already introduced over 30 tools to support teens and their families.”

“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 company added.

The broad-ranging federal 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 the 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 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.

“Meta has been harming our children and teens, cultivating addiction to boost corporate profits,” said California Attorney General Rob Bonta. “With today’s lawsuit, we are drawing the line.”

The use of social media among teens is nearly universal in the U.S. and many other parts of the world. Almost all teens ages 13 to 17 in the U.S. report using a social media platform, with about a third saying they use social media “almost constantly,” according to the Pew Research Center.

To comply with the 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. Many younger kids have social media accounts. The states' complaint says Meta knowingly violated this law, called the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, by collecting data on children without informing and getting permission from their parents.

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.