California Attorney General Rob Bonta co-led a bipartisan coalition of 33 attorneys general to file a federal lawsuit against Meta Platforms, Inc. and its affiliates (Meta), for damage to the mental health of young people.
Filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, the lawsuit alleges that Meta, among other things, designed and implemented harmful features on Instagram and Facebook that addicted children and teens to physical and mental harm.
The attorneys general are seeking injunctive and monetary relief to address Meta's misconduct.
Eight attorneys general announced that they will file lawsuits against Meta in their respective state courts today.
The federal and state charges are the result of a nationwide investigation that Bonta announced on November 18, 2021.
“Our bipartisan investigation has reached a solemn conclusion: Meta has been harming our children and teens, cultivating addiction to increase corporate profits,” said U.S. Attorney Rob Bonta.
“We must protect our children and we will not back down in this fight. I am grateful for the collaboration of my fellow state attorneys general in defending our children and holding Meta accountable,” he stressed.
In today's lawsuit, Bonta alleges that Meta violated federal and state laws, including the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), California's False Advertising Law (FAL), and California's Unfair Competition Law (UCL).
It should be noted that COPPA is a federal law that protects the online privacy of children under the age of 13, while the California FAL prohibits false and misleading advertising, and the California UCL prohibits illegal, unfair and fraudulent business practices.
According to the federal complaint, Meta’s misconduct includes creating a business model focused on maximizing young users’ time on its platforms; employing harmful and psychologically manipulative platform features while deceiving the public about the safety of those features; and publishing reports that purport to show deceptively low rates of harm to users.
While much of the complaint includes information conditionally sealed as part of the attorneys general’s investigation, publicly available sources — including evidence disclosed by former Meta employees — also detail the company’s efforts to attract young users and make its platforms addictive to children and teens.
The Wall Street Journal published an internal Facebook document in 2021 that said of young users: “They are a valuable, but untapped, audience.”
In addition to the lawsuit filed today against Meta, Attorney General Bonta has an ongoing investigation into TikTok for harm to young people associated with the use of its platform. On March 5, 2023, he filed a brief amicus curiae supporting efforts to compel TikTok to produce subpoenaed materials and evidence. The investigation is ongoing.
The states joining today's federal lawsuit against Meta are Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, and Wisconsin.
Florida is filing its own federal lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida.
They are joined by the District of Columbia, Massachusetts, Mississippi, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Utah and Vermont, which have filed related actions in state courts.
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