Meta, the tech giant parent of Facebook and Instagram, has been hit with a flurry of new lawsuits, claiming the company has improperly made its fortune by addicting teens to its social media platforms, producing a range of personal and societal ills, allegedly to create a powerful vehicle from which to target advertising.
On Aug. 31, more than a dozen such lawsuits were filed in federal courts in Chicago and Rockford by attorneys with the firms of Meyers & Flowers, of suburban St. Charles, and Beasley Allen Crow Methvin Portis & Miles, of Montgomery, Alabama.
The lawsuits were not filed as class actions or mass actions. Instead, the suits, to date, were brought on behalf of 12 individual plaintiffs from various communities in Illinois and northwest Indiana.
Peter Flowers
| meyers-flowers.com
Plaintiffs in the actions include: Shanetta Kimber, of Dolton, who is identified as a parent of a 17 year old minor, identified only as T.K.; Jonathan Casteel, of Aledo; Edyta Lee, of Northfield, identified as the parent of a 17-year-old minor, identified as S.L.; Bethany Odems, of Rockford, parent of a 16-year-old minor, identified as D.S.; Destiny Lane, of Chicago; Diamond Haywood, of East Chicago, Indiana; Sabrina Huff-Young, of Matteson, and parent of an 11-year-old, identified as S.B.; Jay Leon, of Chicago; Luvonia Brown, of Chicago, parent to a 14-year-old, identified as T.S.; Tabitha Quinones, of Chicago, parent of a 16-year-old, identified as N.F.; Regine Wynne, of Chicago; and Caitlyn Walsh, of Chicago.
All of the plaintiffs are identified as either parents of minor teenagers, or adults, ranging from 19 to 37 years old, who have been “heavy users” of Meta’s social media products, and who have suffered the alleged effects of alleged addiction to those products since they were teenagers.
All of the nearly identical complaints, ranging in length from 103-105 pages, assert Meta has allegedly duped people into extensively consuming their products, causing negative effects.
They assert the plaintiffs or their children engaged in “addictive and problematic use” of Facebook, Instagram and other Meta products, causing their interest in “any activity other than viewing and posting on the Meta platform(s)” to decline.
Specifically, the complaints assert this heavy use of the Meta products led the plaintiffs to develop a “compulsion to engage with Meta” products, and sleep less and less.
This, in turn, allegedly led the minors and adults to develop other problems, including self-harm, suicidal thoughts, depression, “body dysmorphia,” anxiety, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and other alleged harmful effects.
According to the complaints, Meta intentionally designed their platforms to be “attractive nuisances” for teenagers and young adults. They said Meta executives have allegedly admitted the products were designed to “elicit intermittent dopamine releases with users’ brains, a behavior modification scheme devised to surreptitiously ensnare users in an infinite loop of platform use and dopamine withdrawal.”
The complaints point to Meta’s alleged internal research, allegedly indicate as much as 6% of 14-year-olds admit to addiction to Meta products; 66% of teen girls and 46% of teen boys have experienced negative social comparisons on Instagram; 13% of teen girl Instagram users say the platform makes thoughts of suicide and self-injury worse; 17% of teen girl Instagram users say the platform makes eating issues worse; and Instagram users are twice as likely to develop an eating disorder as those who don’t use social media.
The Meta platforms “present to users a false reality … a world which is constantly controversial and negative; where most other people are exceedingly more attractive than the user; where most other people are exceedingly more successful and/or competent than the user; and which will facilitate and encourage harmful behaviors such as self-harm and eating disorders.
“These features take advantage of biological systems, human behavior, and psychology, to addict and condition users to engage in repetitive content-consuming actions such as scrolling, ‘liking,’ and sharing content in search of repeated dopamine releases. All the while, the users’ input and behavior are tracked to allow the platform to automatically tune itself to each individual user to become as addictive and difficult to stop engaging with as possible.”
The complaints allege Meta allegedly failed to uphold its duty to involve and warn parents of the possible harmful effects, and to “prevent the rampant, foreseeable, and deleterious impact on minor users that access the Meta platform(s).”
They asserted Meta could have installed a range of features on their products, including parental controls, session time limits, algorithms to better filter certain kinds of contents, and other activity restrictions, particularly for younger users, to interrupt the alleged addiction process allegedly associated with the social media products.
The lawsuits include several counts, including fraud, unfair trade practices, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and counts for negligence for “design defect,” manufacturing defect, failure to warn, failure to recall/retrofit, and misrepresentation, among others.
The complaints seek demands for unspecified damages from Meta, including compensatory, treble and punitive damages, and medical monitoring to address the alleged physical injuries suffered by the plaintiffs.
Plaintiffs in the cases are represented by attorneys Peter J. Flowers, of Meyers & Flowers; and Andy D. Birchfield Jr., Jennifer K. Emmel, Joseph G. VanZandt and Clinton Richardson, of the Beasley Allen firm.