consumer product<\/a> – and that harms it causes in the real world should open up manufacturers to lawsuits.<\/p>\nIn 2017, she sued the dating app Grindr on behalf of Matthew Herrick, a man who was stalked and threatened online by an ex-boyfriend, but could not get Grindr to block his harasser.<\/p>\n
Goldberg argued that Grindr’s decision to make it difficult to kick harassers off the app should open the company up to some liability as designers of the product, but the court disagreed – ruling that Grindr merely facilitated communications, and was therefore protected under Section 230.<\/p>\n
“I couldn’t get in front of a jury,” Goldberg recalled, saying that if such cases were allowed to proceed to trial, they would likely succeed.<\/p>\n
A lot has changed in the last five years, she said: the public has become less trusting of social media companies and courts have started to entertain the notion that lawyers should be able to sue tech platforms in the same way as providers of other consumer products or services.<\/p>\n
In 2021, the 9th Circuit Court in California ruled that Snap could potentially be held liable for the deaths of two boys who died in a high-speed car accident that took place while they were using a Snapchat filter that their families say encouraged reckless driving.<\/p>\n
In October, the U.S.Supreme Court decided to hear a case against Google that accuses its YouTube video platform of materially supporting terrorism due to the algorithmic recommendation of videos by the Islamic State militant group.<\/p>\n
Legal experts said that case could set an important precedent for how Section 230 applies to the content recommendations that platforms’ algorithms make to users – including those made to children such as Laurie’s daughter.<\/p>\n
“The pendulum has really swung,” Goldberg said.”People no longer trust these products are operating in the public good, and the courts are waking up.”<\/p>\n
Outside the United States, the balance has shifted still further, and is beginning to be reflected both in consumer lawsuits and regulation.<\/p>\n
In September, a British government inquest faulted social media exposure for the suicide of a 14-year-old girl, and lawmakers are poised to implement stringent rules for age verification for social media firms.<\/p>\n
But aside from a recent bill in California that mandates “age appropriate design” decisions, efforts in the United States to pass new laws governing digital platforms have largely faltered.<\/p>\n
Trial lawyers like Bergman say that leaves the issue in their hands.<\/p>\n
CONSENT AND CONTROL<\/p>\n
Laurie’s daughter got her first cellphone in the sixth grade, when she started taking the bus to school alone.When her mental health began to deteriorate soon after, her mother did not initially make a connection.<\/p>\n
“In many ways I was a helicopter parent,” Laurie said. “I did everything right – I put the phone in the cupboard at night, we spoke about the appropriate use of technology around the dinner table.”<\/p>\n
Now, Laurie knows her daughter had secretly opened multiple social media accounts in an attempt to evade her mother’s vigilance, spending hours connected at night in her bedroom.<\/p>\n
Laurie soon realized her daughter was wearing long-sleeved shirts to cover up cutting scars on her arms.<\/p>\n
“When I asked her about it, she said, “Mom, there are videos showing you how to do it on TikTok, and Snapchat – they show you what tools to use.”<\/p>\n
TikTok and Snap said harmful content is not allowed on their platforms, and they take steps to remove it.<\/p>\n
With her self-esteem plummeting, Laurie’s daughter was introduced to older users on Snapchat and Instagram who sought to groom and sexually exploit her – including requesting sexually explicit images from her, according to her lawyers.<\/p>\n
Although Laurie wanted to keep her daughter offline, social media platforms designed their products “to evade parental consent and control,” her lawsuit alleges.<\/p>\n
A Meta spokesperson pointed to a number of recent initiatives to give parents control over their children’s online activity, including a “Family Center,” introduced in 2022, which allows parents to monitor and limit time spent on Instagram.<\/p>\n
Laurie’s daughter surreptitiously opened five Instagram, six Snapchat and three TikTok accounts, according to her lawsuit, many before she turned 13 – the age when social media firms can allow minors to open accounts.<\/p>\n
“There was no way for me to contact all these companies and say, ‘don’t let my daughter log in,'” Laurie said.<\/p>\n
Though Laurie wanted to further restrict her daughter’s social media access, she was concerned that – since all her classmates were communicating on the apps – her daughter would feel socially excluded without them.<\/p>\n
ENDLESS SCROLLING<\/p>\n
Laurie’s daughter is just one data point in a trend that psychologists have been trying to make sense of over the last decade.<\/p>\n
Between the years of 2012 and 2015, U.S. teenagers reporting symptoms of depression increased by 21% – the number was double for girls, said Jean Twenge, an American psychologist and researcher studying mental health trends.<\/p>\n
Three times as many 12- to 14-year-old girls killed themselves in 2015 as in 2007, Twenge said.<\/p>\n
Until about 10 years ago, cases involving depression, self-harm and anxiety had been stable for decades, said Grant, the psychologist.<\/p>\n
“Then we see this big spike around 2012 – what happened in 2011?The advent of Snapchat and Instagram,” he said.<\/p>\n
One driver of this trend, researchers say, is social comparison – the way that products including Instagram and TikTok are engineered to push users to constantly compare themselves to their peers in a way that can torpedo self-esteem.<\/p>\n
“She’d say “Mom, I’m ugly, I’m fat”,” Laurie recalled of her daughter. “Keep in mind: she’s 98 pounds (44 kg), and 5 foot 5 (165 cm).”<\/p>\n
“So I’d ask her, ‘why do you think this?’ And she’d say, ‘because I posted a photo and only four people liked it’.”<\/p>\n
Grant said he sees children hooked by very specific design choices that social media companies have made.<\/p>\n
“Just think about endless scrolling – that’s based on the motion of slot machines – addictive gambling,” said Grant, who spent years treating adult addiction before turning his focus to children’s technology use.<\/p>\n
Still, mental health experts are divided on the interplay between children’s mental health and social media use.<\/p>\n
“Social media is often a scapegoat,” said Yalda Uhls, a professor of developmental psychology at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA).<\/p>\n
“It’s easier to blame (it) than the systematic issues in our society – there’s inequality, racism, climate change, and there’s parenting decisions too.”<\/p>\n
While some children may attribute a mental health challenge to social media, others say the opposite. Polling by Pew in November showed that less than 10% of teens said social media was having a “mostly negative” impact on their lives.<\/p>\n
There are still big gaps in research into concepts such as social media addiction and digital harm to children, said Jennifer King, a research fellow at the Stanford University Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence.<\/p>\n
“But the internal research – the Frances Haugen documents – are damning,” she said. “And of course, it was shark bait for trial lawyers.”<\/p>\n
INHERENTLY DANGEROUS?<\/p>\n
Toney Roberts was watching CNN at 2 a.m. on a winter’s evening in early 2022, when he saw an advertisement he never expected to see.<\/p>\n
A woman on screen invited parents to call a 1-800 number if they had a “child (who) suffered a mental health crisis, eating disorder, attempted or completed suicide or was sexually exploited through social media.”<\/p>\n
“I thought, wait, this is what happened to our daughter,” he recalled.<\/p>\n
It had been more than a year since he found his 14-year-old daughter Englyn hanging in her room. She eventually died from her injuries.<\/p>\n
Roberts later discovered that his daughter had viewed a video depicting the specific suicide method on Instagram, and that in the months leading up to her death she had been sucked into an online world of self-harm content, and abuse.<\/p>\n
He began to comb through his daughter’s phone, creating a dossier of her mental health spiral, which he attributed to her use of Instagram, TikTok and Snapchat.<\/p>\n
To his distress, he found the video that may have played a part in her death was still circulating on Instagram for months after she died.<\/p>\n
Meta declined to comment on the Roberts case, but said in an emailed statement that the company does not “allow content that promotes suicide, self-harm or eating disorders.”<\/p>\n
After Roberts called the 1-800 number, Bergman and Marquez-Garrett flew to Louisiana to meet the family, and last July, he and his wife Brandy sued the three social media companies.<\/p>\n
“I didn’t want my daughter to be a statistic,” Roberts said, adding that the user who created the video he thinks inspired his daughter’s suicide still has an active Instagram account.<\/p>\n
TikTok and Snapchat also declined to comment on the case.<\/p>\n
Bergman often compares his cases against social media platforms to the avalanche of lawsuits that targeted tobacco companies in the 1950s onwards: lawyers only began winning cases after leaked documents showed advance knowledge of cancer-causing chemicals.<\/p>\n
In Laurie’s case, for example, the lawsuit cites documents made public by Haugen showing an internal Facebook conversation about how 70% of the reported “adult\/minor exploitation” on the platform could be traced back to recommendations made through the “People You May Know” feature.<\/p>\n
Another employee suggests in the same message board that the tool should be disabled for children.<\/p>\n
Meta did not directly respond to a request for comment on the document.<\/p>\n
Since the so-called Facebook Papers were first published in September 2021, Meta has made a number of changes, including restricting the ability of children to message adults who Instagram flags as “suspicious.”<\/p>\n
But at the time Laurie’s daughter was using social media, none of the platforms had meaningful restrictions on the ability of adults to message children, her lawyers say, a design choice they argue should open the companies up to legal liability.<\/p>\n
Bergman said facts like this illustrate social media litigation should become the next “Big Tobacco.”<\/p>\n
Some other lawyers are not convinced by the parallel, however.<\/p>\n
“For every person that gets harmed or hurt in real ways, I suspect there are literally millions who have no problems at all, and are having a great time on the platform,” said Jason Schultz, director of New York University’s Tech Law and Policy Clinic.<\/p>\n
“Courts are going to have to ask: is this really an inherently dangerous thing?”<\/p>\n
DESIGN DECISIONS<\/p>\n
King, for her part, agrees that design choices made by the platforms are problematic.<\/p>\n
“There’s growing evidence that the companies made design decisions that were so skewed toward promoting engagement, that they can lead users to very harmful places,” she said.<\/p>\n
John Villasenor, the co-director of the UCLA Institute for Technology, Law, and Policy, said it could be hard to distinguish between a well-designed algorithm and one that might under some circumstances promote addictive behaviors.<\/p>\n
“It’s not unreasonable for platforms to build digital products that encourage more engagement,” he said.<\/p>\n
“And if someone is prone to addiction, and can’t stop using it – is that always the platform’s fault?”<\/p>\n
In late 2022, Laurie’s daughter returned home after spending a chunk of her high school years in residential treatment centers.<\/p>\n
Each week, she sits down with her mother so they can go through everything she has posted on Instagram – the only social media platform Laurie decided to let her keep using, so she could still connect with her friends.<\/p>\n
Today, she is doing much better, Laurie said.”I feel like I have my daughter back.”<\/p>\n
Originally published at: website (Reporting by Avi Asher-Schapiro @AASchapiro; Editing by Helen Popper. The Thomson Reuters Foundation is the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters. Visit website<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As concern grows over social media, U.S.lawsuits stack up * Surge in mental health problems worst among girls * Lawyers zone in on algorithm designs, whistleblower leaks * Others see platforms as scapegoat for society’s woes By Avi Asher-Schapiro LOS ANGELES, Feb 8 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – At about the time her daughter reached the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17375,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5113],"tags":[5078],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.announcement.news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73259"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.announcement.news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.announcement.news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.announcement.news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17375"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.announcement.news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73259"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.announcement.news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73259\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":73260,"href":"https:\/\/www.announcement.news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73259\/revisions\/73260"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.announcement.news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.announcement.news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.announcement.news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}