Rachel Abrams

I'm Rachel Abrams.

See you on Monday.

From The New York Times, I'm Rachel Abrams, and this is The Daily.

For years, social media companies have relied on an impenetrable First Amendment protection to shield them from legal claims that their products are dangerous to children.

But now, a new cluster of plaintiffs are trying a different tact.

Today, my colleague Cecilia Kang explains why these lawsuits pose an existential threat to social media giants and how those companies are likely to defend themselves.

It's Thursday, January 29th.

Trouble for TikTok.

As a group of attorney generals in several states look into whether the video sharing platform TikTok is harmful for children.

Cecilia, welcome to The Daily.

Thanks for having me.

So, Cecilia, we've talked a lot on this show about the claims that social media is harmful for children, that it can lead to mental health disorders, social isolation.

And there have been all sorts of attempts over the years to really curb the reach and influence of these social media platforms.

Now we have this new crop of lawsuits, and I want to understand how are these lawsuits any different from previous attempts that we've seen to regulate or rein in these companies?

So basically the crux of this is that these are personal injury claims, right?

And that effectively allows the plaintiffs to sidestep what has traditionally shielded these companies from liability, which is their free speech defense.

So let's walk through these cases.

How are they making that claim specifically?

So these are the kinds of claims that I think a lot of people have become familiar with by now.

The idea that young people can develop any number of mental and emotional conditions from repeated exposure to social media platforms.