A New Mexico jury has found Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, guilty of prioritizing profits over children’s safety and enabling child predators to prey on them. The company has been ordered to pay $375 million, or $5,000 per child harmed.
The New Mexico suit was one of 40 legal actions filed by states attorney generals against the company. There are dozens of other suits filed by school districts, individual parents, and nonprofit groups involving children harmed by social media.
Parents SOS, a group made up of families who have lost a child to harm caused by social media, referred to the verdict as a “watershed moment.”
“We parents who have experienced the unimaginable — the death of a child because of social media harms — applaud this rare and momentous milestone in the years-long fight to hold Big Tech accountable for the dangers their products pose to our kids,” the group said in a statement.
“The jury’s verdict is a historic victory for every child and family who has paid the price for Meta’s choice to put profits over kids’ safety,” New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez said. “Today the jury joined families, educators, and child safety experts in saying enough is enough.”
Should we leave the job of protecting children to the company or the state, rather than to parents? How come many parents can protect their children, but others cannot?
I believe the overheated rhetoric and hysteria directed at “big tech” created an atmosphere that made it impossible to fairly assess the merits of the case. Facebook already bans the use of its platform for kids under 13. There is also a wealth of online parental tools that can block social media apps.
Regrettably, a majority of parents don’t use them. Many parents prefer “house rules” over technical blocks. For instance, 86% of parents say managing screen time is a priority, but a significant portion (roughly 40%) do not actively “police” or block the specific content their children consume.
In other words, parents talk a good game but only follow through on serious efforts to control what their kids are seeing less than 50% of the time.
The lawsuit said Meta was proactively serving and directing underage users toward sexually explicit images, allowed adults to contact children for pornographic images, and let users find, share and sell enormous volumes of illegal child porn.
Meta disagrees with the verdict and plans to appeal, a company spokesman said Tuesday.
“We work hard to keep people safe on our platforms and are clear about the challenges of identifying and removing bad actors or harmful content,” Meta spokesman Andy Stone said. “We will continue to defend ourselves vigorously, and we remain confident in our record of protecting teens online.”
During the weekslong trial, New Mexico prosecutors presented internal Meta documents and testimony that it said showed the company ignored warnings about the dangers of its platforms. They alleged design features let pedophiles engage with children, and that the sites were designed to intentionally addict children to using them.
We’ve heard that social media companies use algorithms to “addict” kids to their apps. Indeed, analysis of the algorithms shows that they mimic the “intermittent reinforcement” that a slot machine provides. There’s also evidence of a “dopamine loop.” Platforms like TikTok and Instagram trigger rapid-fire dopamine release. Over time, your brain can become desensitized, requiring more screen time to feel the same level of satisfaction.
Is there a way to effectively limit access to social media apps for underage kids? The short answer is “yes,” but it takes effort for parents to limit or ban access to unwanted apps, and companies need to improve their online protection tools for children.
Like most things in modern life, social media is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it connects people across wide geographic areas by interests and engages the young with people of other perspectives, other races, religions, and ethnicities.
But it can also be a nightmare for parents, a danger to the mental health and safety of their children, and has interfered with the social development and the education of young, vulnerable children.
Social media must be tamed. Or banned.
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