Nevada sues 5 social media platforms alleging harm to youth
A civil lawsuit was filed Tuesday by Nevada's attorney general against five popular social media platforms for allegedly causing harm and mental health problems for youth in the Silver State.
The litigation, filed against TikTok, Snapchat and three Meta-owned platforms — Instagram, Facebook and Messenger — alleges the algorithms used by the platforms have been designed deliberately to addict young minds and prey on teenagers’ well-understood vulnerabilities.
Attorney General Aaron D. Ford announced his office, in conjunction with Nachawati Law Group; WH Law and Kemp Jones, LLP, have filed the civil actions against the platforms.
The suit alleges the social media platform actions have encouraged problematic internet usage and caused young people harms to mental health, body image, physical health, privacy, and physical safety.
“My commitment to protecting consumers, particularly those that are as vulnerable as our youth, is unwavering,”
said Nevada's Attorney General Ford. “Bringing this litigation is an important step toward ensuring social media platforms put our children’s safety before their profits. I look forward to working closely with our partners to protect the youth of our state.”
According to a news release, the civil suit alleges "all of these platforms use features like endless scrolling, dopamine-inducing rewards, disappearing content, likes, shares, push notifications, and other elements to maximize youth use, manipulate young emotions, and exploit children’s developing minds — all for massive financial gain."
All five of these platforms are enormously popular with young people, and all five are alleged to have significantly large populations of teen users, the news release states.
Further, each platform is alleged to have a large percentage of users under the age of 13, the legal age cutoff for these types of apps, the release states.
"Each of these platforms has also been linked to serious dangers to kids, including auto accidents, increases in drug overdoses, suicides, eating disorders, sexual exploitation and more," according to the release.
In the case of Instagram, "explosive whistleblower testimony revealed it has known for years that its products are both attractive and harmful to young children and teens," the news release states. "Similarly, TikTok’s endless streams of content have helped make it one of the most addictive apps in the world among children and teens."
"The Nevada Attorney General’s Office looks forward to working with its outside counsel to bring justice to social-media platforms that have proven to be so dangerous to Nevada’s youth," the release concludes.