A 14-year-old boy in the throes of a mental health crisis, a mother distrustful of social media, and a lawyer with decades of experience in asbestos poisoning: Meet the players behind a new lawsuit charging four of the world’s biggest tech companies with proximately causing a teenager’s descent into debilitating mental illness. You might not guess it, but the case filed by Social Media Victims Law Center (SMVLC) on August 5th details an experience all too common among American teens. The 14-year-old in question, referred to as M.B. in the lawsuit filed on his behalf, was 10 years old when his path toward social media addiction allegedly commenced.
M.B. liked baseball and football, being outside, participating in class, fishing, hunting, and camping. “He was an incredibly happy and outgoing child,” the complaint filed by his mother reads. All this changed when, at 10 years old, he made accounts on Youtube, Facebook, and Instagram without telling his parents. M.B. quickly fell into addiction, a label we are slow to recognize in the case of products widely disseminated across the world: Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, TikTok, and Snapchat. But for M.B. it was just that — deprivation of the sites left him irritable, sleepless, depressed, anxious, and prone to outbursts. These effects snowballed until 2021, when he reported suicidal thoughts and ideation to his teachers at school.
M.B.’s story is far from unique. That is, according to Matthew P. Bergman, founding attorney at SMVLC. M.B is one of 20 or so faces behind cases filed by the young law firm in the past year. And when compared to those filings, M.B., who is projectedly facing a lifelong struggle with mental health, was lucky. Selena Rodriguez, Liam Birchfield, Christopher James Dawley. These are just some of the names of deceased teenagers being represented by SMVLC in allegations that Facebook (et. al) proximately caused their suicides.
Modern social media companies, Bergman told The Politic, are like the asbestos manufacturers of past decades. It is worth adding that Bergman gained notoriety by trying over 800 mesothelioma (a type of cancer linked to asbestos exposure) cases in the 90s and early 2000s. The only difference, Bergman says, is that the abuses of modern social media companies make asbestos manufacturers “look like choir boys.” He explained, “The asbestos companies knew that their products were causing chronic injury over a long period of time to adults. These companies know that their products are causing acute injury, contemporaneously to kids.”
The other thread Bergman points to is the common existence of “smoking gun documents” in both cases. Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen made any plea for plausible deniability on the part of these defendants all but impossible last year when she released piles upon piles of evidence that Meta (doing business as Facebook) was aware of the links between their site and increased rates of social comparison, anxiety, suicide, anorexia, and sexual predation (to name a few).
The documents reveal an internal conversation around measures that could be taken to reduce harm. For example, an initiative labeled Project Daisy broached the idea of disabling the ‘like’ feature on Facebook which demonstrably increased social comparison in teens according to company research. Facebook ultimately opted not to modify their product, considering the potential hit to user engagement. In Bergman’s words, they “put profits over people.”
The link between declining adolescent mental health and the widespread proliferation of social media is indisputable. In 2008, Facebook became the most-visited social media website in the world and quickly integrated itself into adolescent social interaction. Between 2007 and 2018, the suicide rate for kids 12-16 increased by 146%. However, national discourse often treats the impact of these websites as if they were the curses of Pandora’s box. How can we hold companies liable for creating technologies that do nothing more than amplify the ugliest in human society? Did these founders even know what they were unleashing? SVLC replies yes, and the evidence agrees with them.
The claims brought forward in the suit are content-neutral. That is to say, the case does not hold Facebook, TikTok, and other Defendants liable for harmful content posted by third parties on their sites. In this respect, there are no allegations in the suit protected by section 230, which largely offers immunity to social platforms regarding third-party content on their sites. However, it does allege that the algorithms used by these platforms are deliberately developed to be addictive, and thus constitute defective design by legal standards. As with social comparison harm, the Facebook leak provides plenty of evidence to this point. Years of promoting certain metrics of engagement (i.e., maximizing the number of user sessions over time spent), resulted predictably in an onset of addictive behaviors by teenage users.
M.B.’s complaint seeks compensatory damages, but it also seeks injunctive relief (that is, it asks that these companies reform themselves). Proposed reforms include mandatory proof of identity when users register accounts, refusing accounts to registered sex offenders, a limit of 2 hours per 24-hour session spent on social media for users under 18, and verification of parent/guardian approval of minors opening accounts.
The portrait of social media use captured in the injunctive relief claims probably strike the average American teen as unfathomable. Parents determining appropriate hours of use? Single-account limits on social media sites? Submitting an ID when registering for Instagram? One wonders if these were the shoes filled by American smokers in the late 90s when incredulously clarifying that they were no longer allowed to smoke in bars and restaurants. Who is to say if SMVLC’s efforts will be remembered like the Big Tobacco settlements of ‘98. What we do know is that Big tech’s day in court is fast approaching, and countless American victims are eager to share their stories.