Social Media

So, why are lawsuits targeting social media tech giants like Meta, YouTube and others?

Social media platforms have a captive audience with our youth. That comes with a great responsibility to ensure their safety and well-being. Unfortunately, these platforms have hidden information from the public about the platforms’ negative impact on young users’ mental health.  

Meta Platforms, Inc. (Meta), formerly known as Facebook, Inc., is considered one of the Big Five American information technology companies, alongside Alphabet, Amazon, Apple and Microsoft. The company generated $69.7 billion from advertising in 2019, more than 98% of its total revenue for the year. In other words, Meta makes billions of dollars marketing its user base and detailed data on their likes and interests to advertisers to increase its profits.  

So, we know these companies are making money off the viewership of their platforms, but how are they doing it, and why is it so damaging to our youth?  

Social Media Addiction Side Effects  

Like many other addictions, social media addiction is linked to numerous mental health problems, such as:

• Anxiety  
• Depression  
• Eating disorders (anorexia, bulimia, binge eating, etc.)  
• Body dysmorphia (obsessive focus on a perceived flaw in appearance)  
• ADD/ADHD  
• Lack of focus, inability to concentrate  
• Self-harm, thoughts of self-harm  
• Suicide, attempted suicide, suicide ideation  

Changing algorithms to use consumers’ data unethically.  

Social media platforms use advanced computer rules, processes, algorithms, and artificial intelligence to collect and analyze user data. This information is used to assemble virtual files on their users, covering hundreds if not thousands of user-specific data segments. This data collection and analysis allows advertisers to tailor advertising and designate advertising dollars to very specific categories of users.  

Many of these data segments are collected by Meta, scrutinizing each user’s activity on and off the platform. This assessment includes behavioral surveillance that users are unaware of, like navigation paths, watch time and overtime.  

The bottom line is that the larger a social media platform’s user database grows, the more time users spend there. The more detailed information the platform can extract from its users, the more money it makes.   

A growing body of research backs up these findings:  

• According to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study, suicide is the third leading cause of death among high school-aged youths aged 14–18. A separate study on the effect of social media and its correlation to teen suicide found that while social media was not the direct cause of suicide, it did attribute negative behaviors, suicidal thoughts and feelings of loneliness and depression in teens.   
• A study published in JAMA Psychiatry suggests teenagers who use social media more than three hours a day are more likely to suffer from depression, anxiety, aggression and anti-social behavior.  
• A Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology study found that heavy use of social media is more likely to trigger feelings of isolation, depression, and anxiety in young users rather than feelings of connectivity.  
• A review of nine studies on social media’s effects on teens found that “online social networking…leads to increased exposure to and engagement in self-harm behavior due to users receiving negative messages promoting self-harm, emulating self-injurious behavior of others and adopting self-harm practices from shared videos.”  

Aftermath of the Facebook Whistleblower Testimony  

Haugen filed complaints with the Securities and Exchange Commission after her testimony before the U.S. Senate and the WSJ’s coverage. She claimed Facebook misled investors and advertisers by hiding or lying about what it knew about how its platforms were being used.  

A bipartisan group of state attorneys general also announced an investigation into Meta for promoting Instagram despite knowing the detrimental effects the platform was having on users.  

U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, MD, also recommended that social media and other technology companies help minimize the harmful effects of using their products. He urged the companies to prioritize young users’ well-being and share their data about the impact of social media with independent researchers.  

“It’s time we stop trying to profit from kids’ developing brains. For the first time in human history, we have given up autonomous control over our social relationships and interactions, and we now allow machine learning and artificial intelligence to make decisions for us. We have already seen how this has created tremendous vulnerabilities in our way of life. It’s even scarier how this may be changing brain development for an entire generation of youth.” American Psychological Association’s Chief Science Officer Mitch Prinstein.