The Consequences of Social Networks on Minors: Lawsuits Threaten the Monopoly

Social networks are no longer what they used to be. What at the beginning of the 2000s was conceived as a digital space where you could share the first ice cream of the summer, a photo of your pet or the last outing with friends, has become an online place with an overpopulation of influencers, endless advertising and the questions: Where are my friends’ posts? Why do I spend two hours scrolling without pause? Can I stop comparing myself to the stars of the networks?

They are transformation towards algorithmic, advertising and controversial content has left them in a delicate situation, at least in the United States. alone in the country 211 lawsuits have been filed as of April 17, 2023 by school districts, individuals and attorneys general, according to the Washington Post.

The reasons: platforms such as Meta, owner of Facebook and Instagram, Snapchat or TikTok, are accused of “targeting boys and girls in search of benefits despite the fact that academic and medical studies show that this audience is especially vulnerable to addictive effects.” from their platforms while their bodies and minds are still developing”, explains the American media.

These are the cases of a 16-year-old girl from Utah who became so obsessed with the image of her body after hooking on Instagram that she developed anorexia and bulimia, the experience of a boy under 10 years of age from Michigan who spends many nights watching YouTube videos. , TikTok and Snapchat who ended up uploading a nude photo that went viral; and the suicide of an 11-year-old Connecticut girl in the face of spiraling insomnia and depression she experienced after dealing with an extreme addiction to social media. All of them, reported by Bloomberg and shared by The country, They go to court in search of greater and better regulation of content shared on these platforms.

Social networks are aware of their weaknesses when it comes to the negative influence they exert on minors. In 2021, Frances Haugen, a former Facebook worker, sued the company where he worked and leaked internal documents showing that Meta was aware of the harmful effect its apps had on young people, specifically girls who already had body image issues.

On the other hand, TikTok has been sued on several occasions for leaking the personal data of minors and its viral challenges have caused the death of some children and young people. It is the case of blackout challengelinked to the death of at least 15 children aged 12 and under through the end of 2022, as reported by Bloomberg. In addition, according to the Washington Post, ByteDance, the Chinese parent of TikTok, knows that young people are more susceptible to attempting dangerous stunts or even deadly challenges that they see on the platform, because their ability to weigh risk is not fully formed. in order to gain attention and impress the users of the network.

Thus, the difficult regulation and monitoring of content shared on social networks has led to the filing of lawsuits that threaten to destabilize the platform monopoly. As, for example, the derivative of the 2015 Paris attacksthat of the Seattle State Public School, which is suing social networks for attacking the mental health of the youngest, or the recent class-action lawsuit, similar to a class action lawsuit, filed in the Northern District of California.

Given this, the companies that own social networks have begun to take measures to alleviate the adverse consequences of their use, such as depression, addiction or other mental health problems, which they cause in minors. TikTok, for example, announced a one hour limit daily in the use of the app to promote the well-being of adolescents and their families, although a study concluded that this type of limitation can be counterproductive.

But is this enough? Are we one step closer to regulating social networks? At the moment, companies hide behind section 230 of the Communications Decency Law, which allows technology companies to moderate the content of their users, but without assuming responsibility for it, and whose revocation is being debated in the Supreme Court of USA. Even so, and according to the Washington Post, there are other factors that come into play: such as demonstrating that the use of social networks is the only culprit for the mental health problems suffered by minors or the prohibition of some states in the US to sue for “purely emotional damages” when no physical injuries have been suffered.