New York City is suing social media firms for allegedly harming the mental health of children

After designating social media as a “public health hazard” in late January, New York City is now suing Meta, Google, Snap and TikTok for “fueling nationwide youth mental health crisis.” Specifically, these companies face three counts in the lawsuit: public nuisance, negligence and gross negligence. The Mayor Eric Adams administration accuses TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat and YouTube of “endangering our children’s mental health, promoting addiction, and encouraging unsafe behavior.”

These are allegedly achieved by way of harmful algorithms, gambling-like mechanisms and manipulation through reciprocity — making the user “feel compelled to respond to one positive action with another positive action.” The city believes that there is a correlation between the increase in social media usage and the decline in local youth mental health over “more than a decade.”

In response, Google and Meta told CNBC that they have always worked with youth safety experts and provided parental control tools. ByteDance’s TikTok also highlighted some of its specific tools to Axios, namely age-restricted features, parental controls and an automatic 60-minute time limit for users under 18. However, none of the tech companies acknowledged the problematic features listed by the …read more