Meta, TikTok, Snapchat and YouTube are being sued for allegedly targeting young people for revenue despite knowing that they are vulnerable to the addictive features of social media.
New York City has filed a major lawsuit against several social media companies to hold them accountable for their alleged “damaging influence” on the mental health of children.
The lawsuit claims the city is facing an “unprecedented” mental health crisis among its younger population and that the social media companies in the lawsuit “deliberately” target younger people to drive advertising revenue.
The lawsuit also claims the companies are aware that young people are “particularly vulnerable” to the addictive elements of some of their platforms’ features but that these companies target them anyway.
The companies being targeted in the lawsuit are Meta, Tiktok-owner Bytedance, Snap, Google and YouTube. The lawsuit plaintiffs include New York City’s school district and its health and hospitals corporation.
New York City mayor Eric Adams said in an announcement that the city is joining hundreds of school districts across the US that want to force tech giants to change their behaviour and to recover the costs of addressing this public health threat.
“We have seen just how addictive and overwhelming the online world can be, exposing our children to a non-stop stream of harmful content and fueling our national youth mental health crisis,” Adams said. “Our city is built on innovation and technology, but many social media platforms end up endangering our children’s mental health, promoting addiction and encouraging unsafe behaviour.
“We’re taking bold action on behalf of millions of New Yorkers to hold these companies accountable for their role in this crisis, and we’re building on our work to address this public health hazard. This lawsuit and action plan are part of a larger reckoning that will shape the lives of our young people, our city, and our society for years to come.”
At the end of January, five heads of social media companies were grilled in a US hearing that focused on Big Tech companies and the “online child sexual exploitation crisis”. During this event, US Senators called for new laws to hold social media companies accountable, issued scathing criticisms to Big Tech CEOs and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg was pushed to apologise to affected families.
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