Social Networks Face Big Tobacco Moment Over Addiction Claims

Facebook, Google and other tech giants for more than a decade have rejected allegations that they build products deliberately to get kids addicted to social media.

For the first time, company executives, including Meta Platforms Inc. Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg, will answer these accusations in front of a jury as part of a trial that’s drawing comparisons to Big Tobacco’s reckoning with consumer addiction three decades ago.

Facebook and Instagram parent Meta and Google’s YouTube are at the center of the trial, with Zuckerberg expected to testify in Los Angeles as early as next week. The trial will serve as a critical test for thousands of similar pending lawsuits that also target TikTok Inc. and Snap Inc. — and which allege that the world’s most popular products were designed by the four companies to profit at the expense of young people’s safety and mental health.

The companies vehemently deny wrongdoing and say they have rolled out tools and resources to support parents with teens. But if they lose, they will face pressure to change the way minors interact with social media and to reach settlements with other plaintiffs that could total billions — a scenario that could be akin to the deals that tarnished the tobacco and opioid industries.

This case, a personal injury suit brought by the Social Media Victims Law Center in Seattle, centers on a 20-year-old woman from Chico, California, who claims she has been addicted to social media for more than a decade. Her nonstop use of the platforms has caused anxiety, depression and body dysmorphia, she alleges.

The woman recently reached confidential settlements with Snap and TikTok, but they are part of two other so-called bellwether cases set for trials in April and June. Meanwhile, Meta is facing a jury trial in New Mexico that also started this month, focused on its safety record with children.

Previous legal challenges to social media firms have mainly taken aim at content alleged to be harmful or disturbing to users. Most have been unsuccessful because social networks, like other internet businesses, are protected by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, a 1996 law that broadly shields online platforms from liability for third-party content posted on their websites.

That protection was designed to keep platforms from unnecessarily censoring posts to ensure freedom of speech, but has been criticized by some US lawmakers as overly broad, outdated and inadequate to deal with the realities of modern internet use.

In the addiction cases, the companies have been able to knock out some allegations by citing Section 230. But the lawyers behind the cases have gained traction in court by arguing that the products themselves — through their design and functionality — have created harms. They contend the primary cause of psychological suffering for young users stems not from content posted by others but from the algorithms programmed by the companies to prioritize engagement. That includes the web design technique known as infinite scrolling, where new content automatically loads at the bottom of the screen as a user scrolls.

The plaintiff in the first case, identified in filings by the initials K.G.M., “is very typical of so many children in the United States, the harms that they’ve sustained and the way their lives have been altered by the deliberate design decisions of the social media companies,” said Matthew Bergman, founder of the Social Media Victims Law Center and one of the lawyers representing the woman.

Teen Mental Health

While the social media companies can’t rely solely on Section 230 to defend themselves, they have argued in court filings that there isn’t enough evidence to support claims that their product design injures users.

At trial, lawyers for Meta plan to lean on several studies, both internal and external, that reject the idea of a correlation between social media services and teen mental health issues, according to members of Meta’s legal team. They’re also expected to highlight the positive ways in which social media can impact teens, primarily by helping them connect with friends, family and community online.

Meta’s team will dispute that K.G.M.’s health issues arose because of Meta’s products. The company’s lawyers will try to convince the jury that any harm she suffered is from user content not controlled by Meta rather than structure of the products themselves.

Critics and some outside researchers have long held that social media can have a negative impact on mental health, especially among young people. Australia late last year banned social media for kids under 16 years old, and several other European countries are considering similar restrictions. Even Meta’s own research, which was made public by an employee-turned-whistleblower in 2021, found that the company struggled to rein in misinformation, and that its Instagram platform could have negative effects on teens, especially girls.

Meta has since made several changes to how young people can access its services, most notably creating so-called teen accounts that include some content limitations and parental oversight. Meta said in a January blog post that blaming social media companies alone for teen mental health struggles “oversimplifies a serious issue.”

The claims in the lawsuits “don’t reflect reality,” Meta said in the post. “The evidence will show a company deeply and responsibly confronting tough questions, conducting research, listening to parents, academics, and safety experts, and taking action.”

YouTube spokesman José Castañeda said the allegations in the litigation are “simply not true.”

“Providing young people with a safer, healthier experience has always been core to our work,” he said in a statement. “In collaboration with youth, mental health and parenting experts, we built services and policies to provide young people with age-appropriate experiences, and parents with robust controls.”

Zuckerberg, Mohan

The trial, which was supposed to start in late January, was delayed following an unexpected illness for one of the defense’s lead lawyers. A jury of six women and six men was selected last week, and opening arguments and testimony are scheduled to begin Monday, and may run all the way through March.

Instagram head Adam Mosseri is expected to testify the first week, ahead of Zuckerberg, and YouTube boss Neal Mohan is also expected to take the stand. Jurors will also hear from dueling expert witnesses in child psychology and related research fields.

The outcomes of the first set of trials could encourage settlement talks by showing lawyers the strengths and weaknesses of their arguments and evidence — and ultimately how much the remaining cases are worth, according to Eric Goldman, a professor at Santa Clara University law school.

In addition to the cases in Los Angeles, social media companies face consumer protection suits by about three dozen state attorneys general and public nuisance suits by more than 1,000 public school districts across the US that are grouped before a federal judge in Oakland, California. Those cases, which are expected to start going to trial later this year, also expose the tech giants to billions of dollars in damages and potential changes in how the platforms operate.

“The simple fact that a social media company is going to have to stand trial before a jury and account for its design decisions is unprecedented in American jurisprudence,” Bergman said. “This has never happened before.”

Photo: (Photo by Leon Neal/Getty Images)

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