SAN FRANCISCO (CN) — Joined by dozens of other state attorneys general, California Attorney General Rob Bonta sued Meta in federal court on Tuesday saying the company designed Instagram and Facebook to make the social media platforms addictive to children and teens.
According to the Northern District of California lawsuit, Meta Platforms Inc. and its affiliates violated federal and state laws including the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, California's False Advertising Law and California’s Unfair Competition Law.
“Our bipartisan investigation has arrived at a solemn conclusion: Meta has been harming our children and teens, cultivating addiction to boost corporate profits,” Bonta said in a statement. “With today’s lawsuit, we are drawing the line. We must protect our children and we will not back down from this fight. It’s a team effort across many states to do the right thing here.”
In addition to the California suit, filed by 33 states, nine other attorneys general have filed individual suits, according to the New York attorney general's office, for a total of 42 states taking on the social media giant.
In a press conference alongside Bonta on Tuesday, Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti said the companies have used data and sophisticated designs to maximize the addictive nature of Facebook and Instagram.
“These products are hurting kids, and we know that the company was well aware of the effects its products were having on kids,” he said.
New Hampshire Attorney General John Formella said nearly half of all of his state’s high school children have recently reported feeling sad or hopeless, and about 10% reported attempting suicide. His office is filing a separate lawsuit in his state against Meta on similar claims.
Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser added that he thinks the lawsuit shows “we need to be acting to put people’s mental health over the profits of companies.”
The states say Meta built a business model focused on maximizing young users’ time on its platforms; employed psychologically manipulative platform features; published reports purporting to show misleadingly low rates of user harms; and refused to address existing harms to users to conceal and downplay its platforms’ adverse effects.
According to Bonta's investigation, the company internally admitted to knowing its products are in fact addictive and exploit “vulnerabilities in young developing brains.” He cited a recent national poll in which 35% of children said they almost constantly use one or more of Meta’s social media platforms, and 32% of teenage girls said Instagram makes their body image issues worse. A 2022 Pew Research poll found that 62% of teens used Instagram, although only 32% now use Facebook.
“Social media has fundamentally altered the psychological and social world that our children inhabit,” said Bonta, who is a father of three. “We have data to prove this is not good.”
He noted that CEO Mark Zuckerberg claimed in his 2018 testimony before Congress that Meta did not design its products to be addictive.
“This conduct is deceptive, it’s dangerous and it is illegal,” Bonta said Tuesday. “Meta knows all of this. Meta has the evidence, it has the information, it has the data at its fingertips and chose to disregard it — all to promote their products.”
Bonta expects Meta to raise First Amendment and Section 230 issues, but thinks the government has a strong case under the strict liability statute regarding marketing of products to children to get past both of those protections.
The attorneys general have not yet calculated how much financial relief Meta could be demanded to pay if their case prevails, he said, because the states' focus is on changing the company’s behavior.
Other attorneys generals' have drawn a reasonable comparison from Meta to JUUL and other companies that market products to children, Bonta said; those companies are following a “corporate playbook” of deceptive tactics to make harmful products attractive to children.
Although portions of the complaint were redacted, some evidence is public, including statements from former Meta employees.
In one statement cited in the complaint, Chamath Palihapitiya, Facebook’s former Vice President for User Growth, said in 2017 that he doesn't let his own children use Facebook. In another, Meta researchers posted publicly that they were worried about their kids' screen time.
The federal and state complaints follow a nationwide investigation that Bonta announced on Nov. 18, 2021. The state officials are seeking injunctive and monetary relief.
Bonta is also investigating TikTok for harms to young people associated with use of the platform. His office has been involved in litigation from NetChoice regarding claims that children should be protected on social media platforms, now headed to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
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