Tennessee sues Meta, Facebook parent company, over marketing ‘addictive’ product to kids

Tennessee has sued Meta after a multi-state investigation into the Facebook and Instagram parent company, which allegedly violated consumer protection laws and deceptively marketed their platforms to adolescents to the detriment of their mental health .

Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti said Tuesday research indicates social media has played a significant role in a worsening mental health crisis for American youth by exploiting a vulnerable population.

“Meta has known for years that Instagram causes psychological harm to young users,” Skrmetti said.  “Rather than take steps to reduce or disclose the harm, Meta leaned further in to its profit-maximizing approach that hurts kids. Targeting kids with a harmful product and lying about its safety violates the Tennessee Consumer Protection Act.  Meta knows every last design decision that made Instagram addictive to kids and that means it knows exactly how to fix the problem.  We’re suing to make the company fix the problem.”

A bipartisan group of attorneys general filed a federal suit in California on Tuesday, while Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti and a handful of other states plan to file local lawsuits in state courts.

The federal lawsuit alleges Meta misled its users and ratcheted up marketing towards adolescent to take advantage of the demographic, which is “susceptible” to social media manipulation, Skrmetti said.

“Meta is one of the biggest and most powerful companies in the history of the world. They have unfathomable troves of data on their users and others,” Skrmetti said.

The federal lawsuit alleges Meta knowingly built tools to maximize and increase youth engagement at the expense of young users’ safety, highlighting features such as “face and body image manipulation filters” and algorithmic recommendations.

Skrmetti said the lawsuit is “not about money.”

“Our lawsuit is to make the company stop hurting kids,” Skrmetti said. “We know there were a series of decisions to make the product more and more addictive. What we want is for the company to undo that.”

The lawsuit also alleges Meta violated the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act to illegally collect personal data on children under 13.

Skrmetti said the states’ investigation into detrimental social media practices spanned the industry.

“This is not just about Meta,” Skrmetti noted, but he said the company is one of the ‘biggest players” in the social media sphere. “I think its appropriate we lead off with this particular lawsuit.”