Mark Zuckerberg has a bad face. “He has blood on his hands,” they said a few days ago in the United States Congress to the founder of Facebook and today the head of Meta.
The phrase was against him, but also included the other executive directors of technology companies for the alleged damage they cause to minors when doing business with their applications, without taking into account the mental health of children and adolescents.
Eric Adams, mayor of New York, still carries within him the police captain who went and decided to follow the trail of blood.
After declaring in his State of the City address in January that a series of applications represent “a public health emergency,” this week he put the response operation into action.
“We know that these platforms are designed with additive and dangerous features that take advantage of children's novel interest in discovery and play,” Adams said in filing a legal complaint against TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat and YouTube.
The mayor accused these platforms of promoting mental crises among young New Yorkers. His initiative seeks to stop this contagion and recover the 100 million dollars that the city spends each year because of this crisis. Since they cause damage, unless they contribute to healing.
“The elements that keep these people clicking into these dark corners of social media have fueled an alarming rise in online bullying, depression, eating disorders and suicidal ideation,” he insisted.
This initiative is part of a framework in which other cities and school districts have sued these companies for various issues. New York, however, with the largest American school system, champions this movement and marks the path to follow.
The announcement of the legal case was marked, presided over, by a poster with this legend: “Social networks can cause feelings of loneliness, isolation and depression in young people.” Adams and her main collaborators described an even darker picture due to the increase in violence and suicide among young people driven by these applications, along with the hours spent browsing them instead of studying or forging relationships with others in person. .
“Not only do we need to equip people with tools, knowledge and the power to defend themselves, but we must also demand change, said Ashwin Vasan, commissioner of the Department of Health of the City Council of the Big Apple. “And they don't do this if we ask them kindly,” he explained to justify the demand, a last resort in the event of requests being ignored. “The goal is for them to put protectors that better protect minors on their platforms,” Vasan added.
The companies cited in the lawsuit responded that they have strong safeguards and restrictions – such as parental controls, age-based time limits and ability use limits – built to offer teen users age-appropriate things, experiences and support their well-being.
“The allegations in this claim are simply not true,” Google spokesperson José Castañeda said in a statement. “TikTok is an industry leader in the protection of adolescents,” this company added. Meta, owner of Facebook and Instagram, replied in a similar vein.
Snapchat partly distanced itself and acknowledged that, despite its warnings, there is still work to do.
The legal salvo also provoked an immediate reaction from the Partnership for New York City, a non-profit organization that represents several of the city's large companies, and from Tech:NYC, another non-profit society linked to technology companies.
“Instead of making a good faith effort to engage on real issues and solutions, the mayor has created a distraction with this never-ending lawsuit,” Tech:NYC’s Julie Samuels lamented in a statement.
The good faith argument seems closer to Adams in emphasizing that social researchers agree that social media “can cause mental illness in young people in many ways.”
The demand of the City Council of the metropolis is supported by extensive documentation indicating that “New York is facing a youth mental health crisis.”
Among the data is that in 2021, 38% of New York high school students reported feeling so sad or desperate that they stopped doing their usual activities. This percentage represents an increase from 27% compared to 2011 data.
The document clarifies that many things have happened in this decade that could have contributed to this increase in psychological problems, "but we cannot ignore the rise of social networks as a contributor." He emphasizes that these tools have become a central part of young people's daily lives, especially after the introduction of smartphones.
There was surprise at the absence of X (formerly Twitter) in the lawsuit. They justified it due to its little use among adolescents.
