A 20-year-old teenager known as 'KGM' filed a lawsuit claiming that excessive use of Facebook and Instagram at a young age caused her to suffer from depression and even contemplate suicide.
We use Google Cloud Translation Services. Google requires we provide the following disclaimer relating to use of this service:
This service may contain translations powered by Google. Google disclaims all warranties related to the translations, expressed or implied, including any warranties of accuracy, reliability, and any implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and noninfringement.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has testified in Los Angeles Superior Court in California, USA, in a lawsuit related to addiction to the social media platform. A 20-year-old teenager, known as ‘KGM’, had filed a lawsuit claiming that excessive use of Facebook and Instagram at a young age had caused her to suffer from depression and even contemplate suicide.
The lawsuit accuses Meta and YouTube of deliberately designing apps to attract children and teens and increase ‘engagement’. TikTok and Snapchat are said to have settled. In a statement, Zuckerberg denied the claim that children were intentionally targeted. “A significant number of users knowingly lie about their age,” Zuckerberg said. “Enforcing age limits is a very difficult issue. Meta has tried to build different versions of the service that children can use safely.” In a statement, the owner of Facebook and Instagram reiterated that children under 13 are not allowed to use the platform. “Our goal is to provide useful services to users, not to increase the time they spend on the app,” Zuckerberg said. “If users don’t get a good experience from the app, why keep them running?” It is not in our business interest to give bad experiences.’
Zuckerberg suggested that Apple and Google (App Stores) should build age verification systems into mobile sets to prevent children and teenagers from accessing apps. ‘We have been slow to introduce age verification technology,’ he said. ‘We believe that social media users should be allowed to use filters to express their emotions, but we have made a balanced policy of not recommending beauty filters.’
The plaintiffs in the case, however, said that internal documents presented at the hearing indicated that defendants Facebook and Instagram prioritized strategies to increase children’s ‘engagement’, according to Reuters. The plaintiffs’ lawyer, Mark Lanier, presented very aggressive and effective arguments in court. He introduced the ‘ABC’ (Addicting the Brains of Children) formula to understand this case. Which means a strategy to addict children’s brains.
‘Just as cigarette companies knew that nicotine was addictive, so these technology companies knew that their features were damaging children’s mental health,’ argued attorney Lanier, ‘Meta’s own employees had previously warned about the impact on children.’ The debate over the design of the social network is currently underway in the County Superior Court in Los Angeles, USA. The court is examining whether the designs of such apps are legally ‘addictive’.
The hearing focuses on the main question of whether the social media app’s various features and algorithms have directly harmed the plaintiffs. The plaintiffs’ lawyers have presented internal conversations between top Meta executives to the jury as evidence. Those conversations show that a strategy was being developed to keep teenagers hooked on the app. Although such a strategy was developed earlier, Zuckerberg claimed that the focus is now on the usability and quality of the app.
“If you’re trying to say my previous parliamentary statement was inaccurate, I strongly disagree with that,” he told the court. Meta has presented measures such as default privacy settings for teen accounts and parental monitoring tools as evidence of its commitment to child protection. The case, which has been selected as a ‘bellwether trial’, is a representative case from a large number of similar cases filed. The decision in this case will set a precedent for more than 2,600 similar cases filed against social media companies. Technology experts predict that it could change the ‘design architecture’ or structure of social media.
Similarly, Instagram’s head Adam Mosseri, another defendant in the case, also recently said in court that he disagreed with the concept that users can become ‘clinically addicted’ to social media. He said that he has been working hard to protect young people using Instagram and that even if the company makes a profit in the future, it is not in their interest to make bad decisions for the well-being of users.
Outside the courts, governments in Europe and Asia are also engaged in a serious debate about the impact of social media on children. In Germany, Chancellor Friedrich Merz has called for a mandatory age limit for users under 16 on social media. He compared it to giving children the same level of freedom to drink alcohol, citing the fact that 14-year-olds in Germany spend an average of five and a half hours online every day.
In France, the National Assembly, supported by President Emmanuel Macron, has passed a bill to ban children under 15 from using social media. It includes a proposal to make age verification mandatory. In India, a private member's bill has been introduced to ban children under 16 from opening or operating social media accounts. In India, V. Ananth Nageswaran, the Prime Minister's Chief Economic Advisor, has also suggested that age-based limits and strict age verification systems are needed.
Countries including the UK, Denmark, Greece and Spain are discussing age-based restrictions or controls for children. This signals a new phase in the global policy debate about the potentially harmful and addictive effects of social media on children and adolescents. (With the support of the agency)
