Key Points
Dozens of US states, including California and New York, are suing Meta Platforms Inc. for harming young peoples mental health and contributing the youth mental health crisis by knowingly designing features on Instagram and Facebook that addict children to its platforms...
Its motive is profit, and in seeking to maximise its financial gains, Meta has repeatedly misled the public about the substantial dangers of its social media platforms, the complaint says.. It has concealed the ways in which these platforms exploit and manipulate its most vulnerable consumers: teenagers and children...
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...
It follows damning newspaper reports, first by The Wall Street Journal in the fall of 2021, based on the Metas 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...
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...
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