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BOSTON (State House News Service) - Attorney General Andrea Campbell announced Tuesday that she is suing Facebook and Instagram parent company Meta Platforms in state court for alleged violations of the Massachusetts consumer protection law and is joining a bipartisan coalition of attorneys general suing the company in federal court as well.
Campbell charged that Meta has broken Massachusetts law "by purposefully designing their applications to addict young users, and actively and repeatedly deceiving the public about the danger posed to young people by overuse of their products." The suit against Meta and Instagram is to be filed in Suffolk Superior Court. Campbell's office said the misconduct alleged in the suit "affects hundreds of thousands of teenagers in Massachusetts who actively use Instagram."
"Meta has preyed on an entire generation of young people for profit. On its Instagram platform, Meta secretly deployed design features and mechanisms that deliberately exploited young peoples' still-developing brains and adolescent vulnerabilities. They did so in order to override the young person's ability to self-regulate their use," Campbell said. She added, "The company knew exactly how these design decisions could and would hook young people to the point of addiction and yet continue to use them, and in many cases, rejected using feasible alternatives that they knew would mitigate harm to our young people. And they did all of this with profit in mind, not people, not young users."
Campbell specifically called out as problematic Instagram features like "the infinite scroll," near-constant notifications and alerts, autoplay for stories and reels, features she said are designed to create a sense of a fear of missing out, and a slot machine-type tactic called intermittent variable rewards.
Much of the complaint Campbell is filing in Massachusetts court "relies on material that currently is subject to impoundment in the Superior Court," her office said. But it said that internal documents, including a trove released by a former employee, "reveal that Meta purposely made its platforms addictive to children and teens knowing that children and teens were being harmed in the process."
The complaint alleges that young people in Massachusetts are "induced into using Instagram for multiple hours a day (and in lieu of other activities like homework or sleeping)" and in an addictive manner that they might not be able to self-regulate. It also claims that Meta's conduct "has placed an undue burden on the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, including burdens to school systems and increased heath care expenditures, to address the mental and physical health harms that Meta has contributed to in Massachusetts youth."
"Research demonstrates that, for adolescents, after one hour of social media use per day, mental health steeply declines: decreases in happiness and self-esteem occur alongside increases of self-harm, depression, and behavioral challenges," the attorney general's office said. "Research also shows that habitually checking social media can alter the brain chemistry of adolescents, changing the brain’s sensitivity to social rewards and punishments, with implications for long-term psychological adjustment."
In response to the lawsuit filed by Campbell as well as the federal suit filed in California, Meta pointed to actions it has taken to address concerns over its platforms' effects on young people. It highlighted how it makes Instagram accounts created by anyone under 16 private by default, tools that remind teenage users to take a break from social media, parental controls, technology meant to help prevent suspicious adults from engaging with teens, and a ban on content that promotes suicide, self-harm or eating disorders.
"We share the attorneys general’s commitment to providing teens with safe, positive experiences online, and have already introduced over 30 tools to support teens and their families," a Meta spokesperson said in a statement Tuesday. "We’re disappointed that instead of working productively with companies across the industry to create clear, age-appropriate standards for the many apps teens use, the attorneys general have chosen this path."
Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser, who is spearheading the federal lawsuit that Massachusetts and 32 other states have signed onto, said that he always meets with a company he might sue "to see whether or not there can be a amicable settlement." In the case of Meta, he said Tuesday on a Zoom press conference with other attorneys general, "that was not something that was able to happen, so we are filing this lawsuit seeking remedies."
Two years ago, then-Attorney General Maura Healey announced that she was co-leading a nationwide investigation into Meta Platforms, Inc., formerly known as Facebook, for providing and promoting Instagram "to children and young adults despite knowing that such use is associated with physical and mental health harms." The attorneys general said they were investigating whether the company violated state consumer protection laws and put the public at risk.
The investigation was to especially zoom in on "the techniques utilized by Meta to increase the frequency and duration of engagement by young users and the resulting harms caused by such extended engagement."
Written By Colin A. Young/SHNS
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