We have won more than $40 billion in jury verdicts and settlements and have been in business for almost 70 years.
The Social Media Lawsuits claim that Meta Platforms, Inc. (Meta) and its social media platforms, Facebook and Instagram, makes billions of dollars each year by exploiting its most vulnerable users—children. The lawsuits claim the same against ByteDance (TikTok), Google (YouTube) and Snap (SnapChat).
The lawsuits allege these companies knowingly built social media platforms using algorithms specifically designed to lure young people into a destructive addiction. Excessive exposure to the platforms has led kids and young adults to develop eating disorders, self-harm, and suicidal ideation.
Our lawyers are investigating cases on behalf of kids, parents, and young adults who:
Since 1955, we have represented individuals who suffer harm from giant corporations like Meta. You will see our firm’s attorneys listed in The National Trial Lawyers Hall of Fame and the Best Lawyers in America. We also launched Mass Torts Made Perfect, an annual conference that attracts more than 1,500 attorneys who gather to learn from our lawyers how we successfully handle these complex cases.
If you or your minor child has suffered injuries resulting from Meta’s harmfully addictive social media platforms, please contact our office today for a free case review: (800) 277-1193.
What Do We Know About the Meta Social Media Lawsuits?
On June 7, 2022, attorneys for Jessica Guerrero (on behalf of minor plaintiff S.G.) filed a lawsuit against Defendants Meta Platforms, Inc., Facebook Holdings, LLC, Facebook Operations, LLC, Facebook Payments, Inc., Facebook Technologies, LLC, Instagram, LLC, and Siculus, Inc., in the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware (Guerrero v. Meta Platforms, Inc., et al).
The minor, S.G., is a 17-year-old girl who began engaging in “addictive and problematic use” of the Meta social media platforms shortly after registering as a user on these platforms. S.G.’s alleged addiction-related injuries include:
A Business Model That Thrives on Harming American Youth
Nine out of ten teens use Facebook and/or Instagram, spending an average of three hours daily on the platforms. This exposure wields long-lasting negative impacts on teens’ still-developing brains and puts their mental health at risk.
How Facebook and Instagram Work
The social media platforms’ user interfaces sort content to display at the top that is irresistible to young users. This content builds a “false reality” related to beauty, success, and wealth, causing teens to experience negative physical or social comparison. The platforms’ algorithms also promote harmful “controversial, disturbing, negative, and/or emotionally charged” content, the Guerrero lawsuit alleges.
How the Social Medial Platforms Harm Teens
According to the lawsuit, research has shown that “…social media facilitates cyberbullying, contributes to obesity and eating disorders, instigates sleep deprivation to achieve around-the-clock platform engagement, encourages children to negatively compare themselves to others and develop a broad discontentment for life, and has been connected to depression, anxiety, self-harm, and ultimately suicide ideation, suicide attempts, and completed suicide.”
How Meta Benefits From These Harms
Despite knowing of these detrimental effects, Meta constructs its business models around maximizing user engagement, affecting an egregious breach of the public trust.
Advertising on Meta social media platforms generated $69.7 billion for the company in 2019. These revenues are made possible through the exploitation of users. Meta collects and analyzes data on its users so advertisers can conduct micro-target advertising. Because more screen time yields more data and more money for Meta, the company deploys complex algorithms and artificial intelligence “to exploit human psychology,” the lawsuit alleges.
On October 4, 2021, former Facebook employee Frances Haugen appeared before the U.S. Senate to testify that Facebook leadership makes choices that harm children. Haugen stated that during her time at Facebook, decision-makers “repeatedly encountered conflicts between its own profits and our safety” and “consistently resolved those conflicts in favor of its own profits.
The whistleblower underscored that by cherry-picking what information billions of users encounter, Meta, can and does control people’s “deepest thoughts, feelings, and behaviors” and is effectively “shaping their perception of reality.”
Besides cranking up the volume on existing, violence-inducing extremism, division, and polarization, Haugen said that the Facebook machine optimizes profits by cultivating self-harm and self-hate, with vulnerable groups, like teenage girls being the most likely victims. According to Haugen, the social media company’s internal research has repeatedly confirmed these consequences.
In short, “Facebook became a $1 trillion company by paying for its profits with our safety, including the safety of our children,” Haugen said.
The Plaintiff in the Guerrero case argues the following:
Design Defect
Meta’s defective design of its social media products is not safe for users and is particularly harmful to minors. It is technologically and economically feasible for the company to adjust this design to lower the harm to users.
Failure to Warn
The Defendants failed to adequately warn minor users and their parents of the mental, physical, and emotional dangers of using Meta social media platforms.
Manufacturing Defect
Facebook and Instagram developers deviated from the platforms’ design, presenting a risk of serious injury or death, and causing the platforms to perform less safely than intended by their original design.
Negligence
Meta knew or should have known that its social media products harm a significant percentage of its minor users, and yet the company did not redesign its products to reduce the dangers of its platforms.
Meta prioritized profit over safety by implementing a business model based on product features designed to increase the frequency and duration of users’ engagement, despite knowing of their addictive nature and the significant harm to teens and other users.
Fraud
The Defendants marketed and promoted the social media products as being safe, despite knowing of the risks these products posed to users’ mental and physical health. The Defendants concealed this information from the public.
Meta’s research shows that Facebook’s and Instagram’s design, marketing, advertising, and promotion produce multiple harmful effects, including:
Rather than warn users of these potential harms, the Defendants refined their platforms to increase addiction and exposure to these harms.
The amounts that claimants can receive in Meta Social Media verdicts or settlements depend on a wide range of factors, including the type and extent of their injuries. Generally, this type of action could involve several types of recoverable damages, including (but not limited to):
Our attorneys will work to recover the maximum financial compensation for losses stemming from Meta’s defective social media platforms’ designs and marketing practices.
Levin Law