US states accuse Meta of ‘manipulative’ practices towards young users

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free

Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.

A group of more than three dozen US states has sued Meta, alleging the social media platform deliberately deployed manipulative and addictive features in order to hook young users in their hunt for profit, while misleading the public about their actual harms.

In a complaint filed on Tuesday in California federal court, a coalition of 33 state attorneys-general argued that Meta and its photo sharing app Instagram used “harmful and psychologically manipulative product features to induce young users’ compulsive and extended platform use”.

The lawsuit comes amid growing concern over a teen mental health crisis that some researchers and politicians have attributed to social media usage. An additional nine attorneys-general are filing separate lawsuits against Meta in their respective states.

According to the California complaint, the company encouraged harmful addiction to its products by designing “dopamine-manipulating” recommendation algorithms, as well as features such as “likes” that spur users to compare themselves with others. It also flooded younger users with alerts and allowed them to peruse the platform endlessly with the “infinite scroll” design, the attorneys-general said.

Representations by Meta that such features were not harmful “were false and misleading”, according to the complaint, which argued they contributed to mental health issues such as anxiety and depression.

In the complaint, the attorneys-general claimed Meta was now expanding the use of these practices into new domains such as chief executive Mark Zuckerberg’s metaverse project.

The platform also breached the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act by unlawfully collecting the personal data of users aged under 13 for advertising targeting purposes, without first getting parental consent, the complaint alleged.

“We share the attorneys-general’s commitment to providing teens with safe, positive experiences online,” a Meta spokesperson said, adding that the company had 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.”

In 2021 whistleblower Frances Haugen, a former Facebook employee, highlighted similar concerns about the platforms’ effect on younger users. She accused the company of prioritising profit over public safety, and leaked documents including internal research by Meta into the impact of Instagram on young people.

Alongside Snap, TikTok and Google’s YouTube, Meta faces dozens of lawsuits related to their effect on the wellbeing of children and teens, including personal injury cases that allege the companies borrow heavily from the behavioural and neurobiological techniques used by the tobacco and gambling industries to get children addicted to their products.