The city of New York filed a lawsuit on Wednesday against the owners of TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and YouTube, alleging that these companies created and marketed their products to “attract, capture, and addict” teens.
NYC Mayor Eric Adams said that the lawsuit seeks to have these companies pay for their toll on the mental health of young people in his city. It accuses them of negligence, gross negligence, and public nuisance.
“Over the past decade, we have seen just how addictive and overwhelming the online world can be, exposing our children to a non-stop stream of harmful content and fueling our national youth mental health crisis,” Adams said in a statement.
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“This lawsuit and action plan are part of a larger reckoning that will shape the lives of our young people, our city, and our society for years to come.”
The lawsuit brought by the city, including its school districts and health organizations, was filed in California Superior Court, due to the companies’ ties to the Los Angeles area.
Google, which owns YouTube, said the allegations are “simply not true.” A spokesperson for TikTok said the company uses “industry leading safeguards” for teens, while a Meta spokesperson said they’d been working to provide young people with tools to deal with these issues for a decade.
Last month, the heads of social media companies testified during a heated hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee with victims of social media abuse.
“I’m sorry for everything you have all been through,” Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg told families there. “No one should go through the things that your families have suffered and this is why we invest so much and we are going to continue doing industry wide efforts to make sure no one has to go through the things your families have had to suffer.”
