California has joined a coalition of 33 states suing Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, becoming the latest in an ever-growing assemblage of government entities to accuse the social media giant of intentionally designing its platforms to addict young people, allegedly causing or worsening a raft of societal harms, while doing next to nothing to police the presence of children on social media, allegedly in violation of federal law.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta signed onto the lawsuit filed Oct. 24 in federal court in San Francisco. The complaint included a long list of both Democratic and Republic attorneys general from most of the U.S. states.
Other states joining the lawsuit included other western states, including Arizona, Washington and Oregon, and other large states, including Pennsylvania, Ohio, New York, New Jersey and Illinois.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta
"Meta lied about Instagram’s addictiveness," Bonta said. "Meta lied about Instagram’s negative impact on young people’s mental health.
"Meta lied, and our children paid the price."
The complaint centers on allegations that Meta's social media platforms are designed to "entice, engage and ultimately ensnare" teens and children, to "maximize financial gains."
"Meta has repeatedly misled the public about the substanial dangers of its social media platforms," the complaint says. "It has concealed the ways in which these platforms exploit and manipulate its most vulnerable consumers: teenagers and children. And it has ignored the sweeping damage these platforms have caused to the mental and physical health of our nation's youth."
The complaint does not publicly fully explain all of the allegations against Meta, as large portions of the 233 page complaint are blacked out, for reasons not explained in the complaint.
However, the complaint is very similar in many key ways to a barrage of other lawsuits filed by trial lawyers throughout the country on behalf of school districts and other entities against Meta and other top social media platforms.
Those lawsuits are being collected and centralized in mass proceedings in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, where Meta is headquartered.
The lawsuits all level similar accusations against Meta, as well as other social media titans, including Google; Snap Inc., operator of the SnapChat app; and ByteDance, operator of TikTok.
The school district lawsuits accuse the social media companies of creating public nuisances by essentially addicting students to a constant barrage of games, videos, photos and more. They assert this has harmed students and schools alike, creating a mental and behavioral health crisis among American children and teens, encouraging young people to engage in potentially harmful behaviors, while increasing dysfunction, anxiety, depression and other psychological and emotional disorders and maladies.
With potentially billions of dollars to be extracted under such lawsuits, school districts across the country have been quick to respond to solicitations from trial lawyers amassing a mountain of cases from which potentially a massive pot of legal fees could be paid.
The state coalition's complaint does not include the names of any private trial lawyers hired to represent or aid any of the states, at this point.
But the state coalition's lawsuit also accuses Meta of causing similar problems.
The state coalition centered its case on claiming Meta's actions amount to violations of state consumer fraud and deceptive practices laws, as well as violations of a federal law, known as the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, which requires social media companies to ensure no one under age 13 is using their sites without verified parental consent.
The complaint asserts Meta knows children are improperly using their platforms, and is allegedly well aware of the "harmful effects" of its products. But the company allegedly "has persisted in developing and deploying features that exploit young users’ psychological vulnerabilities and significantly harm young users in its pursuit of profit."
The state coalition is seeking an array of potential damages, including civil penalties and other payments from Meta. Each state's damages claim differs slightly, based on each state's different laws.
But each one could be massive.
California, for instance, is seeking civil penalties of $2,500 for each violation of various sections of its state Business and Professions Code, which addresses alleged misleading marketing and fraudulent business practices. When multiplied across potentially millions of alleged violations, the potential payout to California and other states could quickly mount into a pot worth hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars.