Lawsuit alleges social media giants buried their own research on teen mental health harms

"Meta, YouTube, TikTok and Snapchat know exactly how addictive their platforms can be to teens. And they continue to target teen users anyway. Those are allegations a group of school districts is making in a lawsuit against the social media giants, according to a newly unsealed legal filing that quotes the companies' own internal documents."

"IG (Instagram) is a drug we're basically pushers, Meta researchers said in an internal chat, according to the filing. An internal TikTok report noted that minors do not have executive mental function to control their screen time."

"Snapchat executives once acknowledged that users who have the Snapchat addiction have no room for anything else. Snap dominates their life. And staffers within YouTube once said that [d]riving more frequent daily usage [was] not well-aligned with efforts to improve digital wellbeing, the filing states."

"The brief containing the internal comments, research and employee testimony has been presented as evidence in a massive lawsuit brought by hundreds of individuals, school districts and attorneys general from across the United States against the four companies Instagram-parent Meta, Snap, TikTok and YouTube-parent Google in the Northern District Court of California. The platforms deliberately embedded design features in their platforms to maximize youth engagement to drive advertising revenue, the complaint claims. And the school districts allege that the social media companies have contributed to a youth mental health crisis that schools must address by investing in counseling and other resources."

Internal company statements and cited research reveal that major social platforms acknowledged features that promote addictive use among teens while continuing to pursue young users. Plaintiffs including hundreds of individuals, school districts, and state attorneys general allege Meta, YouTube, TikTok, and Snapchat deliberately designed apps to maximize youth engagement and advertising revenue. The complaint cites remarks describing Instagram as a drug, TikTok noting minors' limited executive function for screen-time control, Snapchat admitting addiction dominance, and YouTube staff recognizing tensions between increased usage and digital wellbeing. The lawsuit seeks remedies and increased school counseling resources; the companies say the filing misrepresents safety efforts.

Read at www.cnn.com