Facebook’s parent company, Meta, is being sued by 42 states for allegedly altering the “psychological and social realities of a generation of young Americans.”
According to the 228-page complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, Meta’s business model specifically targets young users by monetizing their attention through data collection, targeted advertising, and feature deployment to extend their time on their social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram.
“Meta has harnessed powerful and unprecedented technologies to entice, engage, and ultimately ensnare youth and teens,” the complaint read. “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.
“It has concealed the ways in which these Platforms exploit and manipulate its most vulnerable consumers: teenagers and children,” it continued. “And it has ignored the sweeping damage these Platforms have caused to the mental and physical health of our nation’s youth. In doing so, Meta engaged in, and continues to engage in, deceptive and unlawful conduct in violation of state and federal law.”
The lawsuit also adds that Meta frequently publishes misleading reports to boast a “deceptively low incidence of user harms.”
“Despite overwhelming internal research, independent expert analysis, and publicly available data that its Social Media Platforms harm young users, Meta still refuses to abandon its use of known harmful features—and has instead redoubled its efforts to misrepresent, conceal, and downplay the impact of those features on young users’ mental and physical health,” it alleges.
In response to the lawsuit, a Meta spokesperson tried to gaslight the plaintiffs for immediately filing the lawsuit instead of communicating with the multinational technology company first.
“We share the attorneys general’s commitment to providing teens with safe, positive experiences online, and have already introduced more than 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.”
Among the states that signed onto the lawsuit are Arizona, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, and Wisconsin.