After designating social media as “risk to public health” at the end of January, New York City is now pursue Meta, Google, Snap and TikTok for “fueling the youth mental health crisis nationwide.” Specifically, these companies face three counts in the lawsuit: public nuisance, negligence and gross negligence. Mayor Eric Adams' administration accuses TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat and YouTube of “endangering the mental health of our children, fostering addiction and encouraging dangerous behavior.”
These results would be achieved through harmful algorithms, gaming mechanics, and reciprocal manipulation, which would force the user to “feel obligated to respond to one positive action with another positive action.” The city believes that there is a correlation between the increase in social media use and the decline in the mental health of local young people over “more than a decade”.
In response, Google and Meta said CNBC that they have always worked with youth safety experts and provided parental control tools. ByteDance's TikTok also highlighted some of its specific tools for Axiosnamely age-restricted features, parental controls, and an automatic 60-minute time limit for users under 18. However, none of the tech companies have acknowledged the problematic features listed by the Adams administration.
This trial follows a recent Senate hearing on children's online safety, which was attended by the CEOs of all the aforementioned tech companies (except Google). In his opening remarks, Senator Lindsey Graham told tech executives that “you have blood on your hands” – a reference to online child exploitation and cyberbullying that has unfortunately led to deaths.
Through this deal, the Adams administration wants these tech companies to fund mental health services for the city's youth, which reportedly cost more than $100 million each year. But ultimately, it's about forcing these tech giants to stop manipulating young users into addictive behavior, as well as getting policymakers to pass new federal laws that protect mental health of young people on social platforms.
Before this trial in New York, Meta was already facing a similar case of 41 states in October 2023, in which it was accused of misleading the public about the safety of its platform's “addictive” features. Meta, Snap, TikTok and Google have also been sued. multi-district litigation in 2022 for their addictive characteristics that allegedly cause “emotional and physical harm, including death” to adolescents.
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