States use features to lure children to social media

A federal lawsuit against Meta, the parent company of an Instagram app that promotes self-destructive photo production and adversarial publishing

Meta’s design features are the subject of lawsuits that seek to have them considered unfair under state consumer protection laws. The attorneys general want courts to order the company to change its platforms so that they aren’t as unsafe for young people.

In early 2021, Facebook announced that it was planning to create a version of its popular app for children, called theInstagram Kids. The news drew a backlash, among lawmakers and children groups.

Regulators want to hold social media companies accountable for harms to young people. In Britain, a coroner concluded that the death of a teen who took her life after viewing thousands of self-destructive photos on the platform may have been preventable.

More than 30 states joined a federal suit against Meta. Several attorneys general filed legal actions on Tuesday in state courts.

Collectively, more than 40 states paint a picture of a company that brushed aside safety concerns about its products in order to addict as many young people as possible as a way of juicing its profits.

The Like button is not a defense: The California Attorney General’s Office says Meta will not sue Google for its violation of Section 230

Section 230, a law that protects the tech industry, permits social media companies to be free of legally responsible for content created by users.

The state prosecutors have made the suits in hopes of working around the law, and Meta is likely to invoke Section 230 as part of its defense, according to legal experts.

Kosseff continued: “Courts are increasingly willing to conclude that Section 230 is not a defense in lawsuits arising from claims about product design, though the line is not always clear.”

Nneji said that the company shares the commitment of the states to provide safe, positive online experiences for teens. She said that the company has introduced features to support users and their families.

Nneji was disappointed that the attorneys general chose to follow a path rather than work with other companies to create age-appropriate standards for the many apps teens use.

In one internal finding the paper surfaced in its 2021 Facebook Files investigation, 32% of teen girls who felt bad about their bodies said using Instagram made them feel worse.

The states say Meta designed Instagram’s algorithms, which determine what content users see in their feeds, to expressly keep them hooked. Meta is able to benefit from what psychologists describe as a “variable reward schedules” that turn into a slot machine by presenting posts in order of expected interest rather than chronologically. Users are conditioned to keep coming back and scrolling in the hopes of getting dopamine when they come across content that makes them like it, the lawsuit claims.

A ready way for people to compare themselves to others is to see the Like count on their post. Instagram has offered the option of hiding that tally, but has left it visible by default. “Meta could have, at a minimum, hidden Like counts for young users of Instagram and Facebook, but it declined to do so,” the lawsuit states.

California attorney general Rob Bonta told reporters today that the states know Meta had internal discussions about the negative impact of the Like button, but decided to keep it anyway. He says the line is drawn today. We will not back down in the fight for our kids’ online safety.