Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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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.
Internal research at Facebook found that its photo sharing app, Instagram, can harm the mental health of millions of young users. Research shows 95% of teens are on social media. More than a third say they're on constantly.
For young people, the TikTok platform is like digital nicotine. One chart showed 21% of girls in the U.S. felt somewhat worse or much worse after using Instagram. Social media taught me things about myself that I didn't even know, like how I had an ugly nose or how my weight wasn't the proper weight. Social media said the solution to these things wasn't self-acceptance.
Social media said the solution to these things was products and sometimes even surgeries. Unregulated social media is a weapon of mass destruction that continues to jeopardize the safety, privacy and well-being of all American youth. It's time to act. As a dad of three, I'm angered and horrified.
As an attorney general, I, along with my colleagues across the country, are taking action to do something about it.
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.
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Chapter 2: What legal protections have social media companies relied on?
which is that social media is addictive and that the addictive nature of these platforms have led to a bevy of personal injuries, including anxiety, depression, suicidal thoughts, eating disorders. So what's really different is this is less about the content they host, and this is more about the nature of the technologies. And this is a really novel legal theory.
It's essentially social media's big tobacco moment. which led, as you know, to many years of litigation against the tobacco companies and ultimately led to the decline of smoking. And so many in social media see this as a really existential moment.
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.
That's exactly right, Rachel. What the lawyers in these cases and the plaintiffs are trying to do is to get around that legal shield that the social media companies have been able to use to protect themselves in court. And they're saying, no, this is actually not about speech at all.
This is about you companies creating and engineering technologies to be harmful and that those are violations of state and federal consumer laws.
So let's walk through these cases. How are they making that claim specifically?
So this year, we will see two big batches of trials begin in all of these cases that have been filed. And the first batch that takes place in Los Angeles... include nine plaintiffs, nine trials, separate trials by these different plaintiffs. They're all individuals, all claiming that when they were young, when they were minors, they became addicted to social media and they suffered these harms.
And these nine cases, they're known as bellwethers because they've been picked out of thousands of lawsuits filed by individuals against the social media companies.
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Chapter 3: What new lawsuits are emerging against social media platforms?
And they're seen as very representative of the many different charges and experiences that individuals have had and suffered, as they claim, by becoming addicted to these social media companies. Right. So the first case and trial that begins is of a individual who goes by the initials KGM. She is a now 20-year-old from Chico, California.
And she has said that she created her first social media account on YouTube at the age of eight. She then joined Instagram at the age of nine and Musical.ly, which is now known as TikTok, at the age of 10 and Snapchat at 11. So she's been using all the social media platforms for a long time.
And her mom said that she had no idea that these platforms could be dangerous and could become so addictive to her child. And she only figured that out after watching a news program where she learned about the potential harms of social media.
Her mom said that if she had known how potentially harmful these sites were, she would have prevented her daughter from perhaps even having a phone and using the apps. And what KGM, the plaintiff, is arguing is that the social media platforms were incredibly alluring to her and that she got hooked.
And these very addictive products that use features like infinite scrolling, meaning it's just so easy to keep scrolling and scrolling. And things like autoplay videos where right after you finish a video, the next one's queued up before you even think about it.
and algorithms that direct you and recommend particular content that she has found to be very toxic, that all these features led her to overuse social media and become addicted. And that, in turn, led to lots of mental health problems, including anxiety, depression, suicidal thoughts, and body image issues for her.
Hmm. Hmm.
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. What are some of the other litigation that you're watching?
So the next big wave begins around June in federal court. They're all bundled together, and they're brought by attorneys general in dozens of states, as well as school districts. And those are really interesting, Rachel, in that they're charging the companies with being public nuisances. The fact that they, as school districts and states, have had to shoulder the costs of mental health services,
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Chapter 4: How do these lawsuits differ from previous attempts to regulate social media?
When the trials began against Big Tobacco, it seemed crazy and really far-fetched to accuse the companies of creating an addictive and harmful product. But they did. And with social media, with all of these young people who have been blamed for years for being unable to regulate their use of these social media apps, the conversation might change.
The blame could lie in a different place with the social media companies. Now, that won't take back the experiences of so many young people who say they've been harmed by these social media platforms. But it could profoundly change the conversation in our society.
Cecilia Kong, thank you so much for your time. Thanks for having me, Rachel.
We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today.
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