Something extraordinary happened this week!
Faced with a massive, coordinated legal battle from a bipartisan coalition of U.S. State Attorneys General, the social media giant, Meta, agreed to a landmark settlement to stop a trial and settle claims against its Facebook and Instagram platforms. The settlement? Up to $17 billion and meaningful, stronger child-safety measures on its platforms. If approved by the court, this settlement will stop an avalanche of litigation by 47 states against Meta. (See Associated Press article)
To understand how big this is, we need a quick look back.
2012 saw a sudden spike in teen depression linked directly to smartphones and social media that has continued to intensify, wreaking havoc for our youth and families. As time went on, predators and algorithms found easy access to vulnerable young people, and new reports of exploitation, obscene content, sextortion, and cyber bullying mushroomed and exploded.
For years, we dealt with the fallout and treated the symptoms. Grassroots concerns escalated to organized complaints and widespread public outcry, yet technology continued to advance unfettered, with no accountability for outcomes.
Until March.
As AGA reported earlier, some glimmers of hope appeared in March:
- In a personal injury trial in Los Angeles, a young woman (K.G.M.) was awarded $6 million total from social media providers Meta and YouTube for addictive design, mental health harms, and failure to warn.
- New Mexico became the first state to win at trial against Meta for misleading consumers and endangering children. State attorneys argued that Meta should be held liable for the way in which its platforms endangered children and exposed them to sexually explicit material and contact with sexual predators.
Yesterdays BIG Shift
We are hopeful that yesterdays settlement agreement will be a turning point for youth safety on social media platforms.
The original lawsuit, filed three years ago, accused the tech giant of contributing to the youth mental health crisis by deliberately designing features that cause children to become addicted to its platforms. In addition, it claims that Meta routinely collects data on children under 13 without their parents’ consent, in violation of federal law. "Meta has harnessed powerful and unprecedented technologies to entice, engage, and ultimately ensnare youth and teens. Its motive is profit, and in seeking to maximize its financial gains." As expected, Meta denies any wrong doing.
We Have Seen This Story Before
For decades, cigarette companies made enormous profits from products that were addictive and harmful. Eventually, science, courageous individuals, litigation, government action and public awareness changed what society was willing to tolerate.
We stopped treating the consequences simply as failures of individual self-control and began asking the question: What responsibility does an industry have when it designs and sells a product that can harm people?
Big Tobacco's day of reckoning came, and things changed.
When it comes to the safety of our children, this question demands an answer and meaningful action.
The Toxic Factory
For years, big tech argued that child safety should be accomplished through education and parental oversight. Parents were told:
Do more to "manage" screen time.
Set better boundaries.
Monitor children more carefully.
Install another parental-control application.
All of those things are valuable, and parents/guardians have an indispensable role.
But that doesn't excuse tech platforms from providing safe products.
In the New Mexico ruling, Judge Bryan Biedscheid compared Meta to a toxic factory, branding it a "public nuisance" (a legal designation usually reserved for environmental hazards like toxic waste or contaminated water). "Just as noxious pollution produced by the factory can harm the common public right to reasonably clean air, the harmful effects of Meta’s platforms on children do not stay contained by its platforms," he wrote in the 60-page ruling.
Imagine telling a family living beside a factory emitting toxic pollution to simply teach their children to breathe more carefully. It is unthinkable.
This Is Bigger Than Meta
The unprecedented rulings in these recent legal battles are driving essential conversations about the inherent responsibility of tech providers to design their products to include reasonable protections against exploitation and exposure to explicit or obscene material for minors.
In times of political unrest, platforms demonstrated a sophisticated ability to detect and block certain content from reaching the public. They know how their tech works and are capable of providing better protections for young people.
Finally! We see the burden beginning to shift from expecting parents and children to protect themselves online to requiring the tech companies that provide the products to build in safety by design. Technology changes rapidly, and predators quickly exploit any new functionality. Even the most diligent of parents cannot keep up.
The Fight Is Not Over
The Big Tobacco reckoning did not happen in one day, and neither will this one. The proposed Meta settlement still requires court approval, and litigation and policy battles concerning children and technology will continue.
But we KNOW we can DO BETTER.
AGA is commited to restoring healthy attitudes about sex, love, and relationships. We believe the next chapter must go much farther.
- We must continue confronting the sexual exploitation of young people online.
- We must continue to insist that the companies profiting from the digital lives of children share responsibility for protecting them.
- We must require transparency and accountability from every company that deems itself worthy to put technology in the hands of our young people.
- We must equip parents with information to help them build strong bonds with their children and tools to help them navigate any crisis.
KUDOS to the states' attorneys general for demanding more from big tech. For our children, let's all keep the pressure on - FULL STEAM.
Check out our Death by DM episode to hear Walker Montgomery's story.