In a watershed moment in the tech world, attorneys general in 41 states and Washington, D.C. sued Meta for knowingly endangering children and getting them addicted to Facebook and Instagram, despite claims to the contrary.
Colorado and California lead the class with a joint lawsuit that includes 33 other states. They allege that Meta “exploited powerful and unprecedented technologies to lure, engage and ultimately ensnare youth and adolescents,” according to the lawsuit. The District of Columbia and eight other states have filed separate lawsuits against the company.
Lawsuits by dozens of attorneys general alleging Meta violated consumer protection laws are evoking the kind of landmark lawsuits brought against Big Tobacco and Big Pharma, he says. Hilary Robinson, Associate Professor of Law and Sociology at Northeastern University. If successful, these cases could transform how tech companies are held accountable for protecting consumers.
“It seems to me that this is the right time to harness state power,” says Robinson. “This is just another attempt to figure out how to use it in an effective way that doesn't destroy the benefits for the people who use these things, but limits these really negative externalities that have had really serious consequences for individual families.”
It's a big “if,” but Robinson says the attorneys general are “more likely to succeed if they can find the kinds of things they were able to find in the opioid lawsuit, like clear knowledge of harm.”
Meta already provides many of these elements in some ways, says Robinson.
In 2021, a massive internal leak led to an investigative series from the Wall Street Journal, called “Facebook files.” Documents obtained by the Journal showed how Facebook was both aware of the negative impact its platform could have on people, including teenage girlsand is actively considering ways to attract new people.
Then there is an infamous one 2014 study was published by Facebook in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The study, conducted on 700,000 users without their permission, showed evidence of mass “emotional transmission” through the platform. Affective contagion is the spontaneous spread of feelings between people.
This is just another attempt to figure out how to use it in an effective way that doesn't destroy the benefits for the people who use these things.
Hilary Robinson, associate professor of law and sociology at Northeastern
“Meta will have a hard time defending against this because they published this study,” says Robinson. “It's clear that they treated their user population as a group whose behavior they care about and can influence.”
The negative impact that social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram have on children and teenagers has been extensively documented, including by Rachel Rogers, associate professor of applied psychology at Northeastern. Rodgers' research focuses on how Instagram can create body image concerns and risks for disordered eating in teenagers.
“This [occurs] through different mechanisms, one of which is the fact that there are many photos on these platforms that present unrealistic images of people,” says Rodgers. “It leads to appearance comparisons and the idea that this is possible, that this is possible and this is how you should look.”
Pursuing a consumer protection case is a new, and potentially influential, legal approach in the tech world, where companies often argue that they are information services companies rather than consumer product providers. “There are a lot of ways we regulate what products go into the market economy and what they can be used for,” Robinson says, so if this approach is successful, it could set a precedent for further regulation in the tech sector.
But even if the cases are successful, traditional strategies for how to hold a company like Meta accountable, such as financial penalties, “may not go far enough,” Robinson says.
“The expectation is that if you really hurt a business' bottom line or profit, then you will change their practices in the future,” says Robinson. “That said, many of these businesses are outside the scope of the normal economy at this point.”
“I'm much more in favor of thinking about how law and technology are both engineering sciences and how law can intervene in the design of these kinds of technologies,” he adds.
Robinson indicates laws adopted in Utah that limit how children can use social media. The law focuses on specific features of social media, especially push notifications, that can keep new followers.
“This law requires that the default is no notifications, so when you download the app, notifications are turned off, and that if they are turned on, they must be kept until later,” says Robinson. “This is a front-end interference with how the app itself works.”
Cody Mello-Klein is a reporter for Northeastern Global News. Email him at c.mello-klein@northeastern.edu. Follow him on X/Twitter @Proelectioneer.
