Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, is facing lawsuits from 45 states and the District of Columbia for allegedly failing to keep children safe online.
A New York Times report analyzed numerous court filings that claim company leaders rejected employee requests to provide better safeguards for children. The analysis included over 1,000 pages of documents and correspondence.
“A lot of these decisions ultimately landed on Mr. Zuckerberg’s desk,” said Raúl Torrez, the attorney general of New Mexico, per NYT. “He needs to be asked explicitly and held to account explicitly for the decisions that he’s made.”
In May, New Mexico arrested three men accused of targeting children for sex, known as “Operation MetaPhile,” according to a New Mexico Department of Justice press release. The suspects contacted and solicited sex with underage decoy accounts that the New Mexico Department of Justice created.
“This operation conclusively demonstrates that using Meta’s social media platforms not only endangers children in the virtual world but, more importantly, they are spaces that sexual predators actively use to hunt, groom, and victimize children in the real world,” Torrez said in the press release.
The lawsuits reflect how teenagers and children can be sexually exploited, harassed, bullied, body-shamed, and emotionally induced into compulsive online use.
Meta disputes the states’ claims and has filed motions to dismiss the lawsuits.
Lisa Crenshaw, a spokesperson for Meta, told NYT that the company aims to keep children safe on its site and has specialists dedicated to focusing on the youth’s app experience.
“We want to reassure every parent that we have their interests at heart in the work we’re doing to help provide teens with safe experiences online,” Crenshaw told NYT.
According to Crenshaw, the states’ legal complaints “mischaracterize our work using selective quotes and cherry-picked documents.”
“They preach that they have safety protections, but not the right ones,” said Mary Rodee, per NYT. Rodee’s 15-year-old son, Riley Basford, was allegedly sexually extorted on Facebook in 2021 and died by suicide just hours later.
Earlier this month, U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek H. Murthy called for warning labels on social media platforms, reported the Associated Press, saying they pose a mental health risk to young people.
“It is time to require a surgeon general’s warning label on social media platforms, stating that social media is associated with significant mental health harms for adolescents. A surgeon general’s warning label, which requires congressional action, would regularly remind parents and adolescents that social media has not been proved safe,” Murthy wrote in a NYT op-ed. “Evidence from tobacco studies show that warning labels can increase awareness and change behavior.”
In February, the Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing to question the CEOs of the most popular social media platforms, including Zuckerberg, about the steps the companies are taking to prevent the exploitation of children using their apps, as covered by The Dallas Express.
The hearing was attended by families of children who have been exploited online, some of whom died by suicide.
“I’m sorry for everything you have all been through,” Zuckerberg said, per NYT. “No one should go through the things that your families have suffered.”
