New York: Meta is facing hundreds of legal challenges across the United States.
A high-profile trial in one of those cases, over the adverse effect they have over mental health of the youth, opened in Tennessee on Monday.
The high-profile trial against Meta Platforms is over the state’s claims that Instagram was deliberately designed to encourage compulsive use among teenagers and contributed to a growing youth mental health crisis.
The lawsuit, filed by Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti’s office, claims that Meta failed to disclose extensive internal research showing Instagram could harm teens and continued offering features it knew were dangerous without warning users, reported Reuters.
Skrmetti has alleged that Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg was repeatedly warned by some of its employees about research that found a negative impact on teens, but declined to fund efforts to minimise those harms and made misleading public statements about the amount of harmful content on the platforms.
The lawsuit seeks financial penalties and a court order directing Instagram to modify aspects of the platform that the state says are harmful to mental health of teenagers.
Features like autoplay, Instagram’s Reels videos, notifications and designs are in focus in the case.
Meta has rejected the allegations.
“We want them to do that in a protected space, which is why we’ve spent a decade building safe, age-appropriate defaults for teens alongside simple tools for parents to set the right boundaries for their family,” a company spokesperson was quoted as saying by Reuters.
It is one of several trials in the next few weeks that will scrutinise allegations that Meta’s social media platforms were intentionally built to be addictive.
Several states have accused the US-based tech giant of misleading consumers about safety of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.
School districts and individual families have also filed legal cases alleging social media harmed children’s mental health.