Circling Like Vultures: California Leads New Attack on Facebook

The tech industry is reeling from the latest court verdict from New Mexico, where a judge and jury last week slapped Facebook and Instagram’s parent company, Meta, with $567 million in fines to pay for various treatment services for youth who supposedly have been harmed by social-media usage. The court also demanded changes in the platforms’ design. This comes on top of $375 million in civil fines that a jury in March imposed on the company for supposedly violating the state’s consumer-protection law, known as the Unfair Practices Act.

As Politico reported, the New Mexico decision is the “first time a court has ordered a broad package of user-experience changes to a major social media platform based on a final judgment about harms to users.” Furthermore, the state’s “innovative” approach to the litigation — avoiding First Amendment issues by referring to social media as a public nuisance similar to a polluting factory — “could serve as a blueprint for other states.”

Now this blueprint unfolds. The latest trial, which is scheduled to begin next week, is spearheaded by California and several other state attorneys general. In People of the State of California v. Meta Platforms Inc., California, Colorado, Kentucky and New Jersey argue that “Meta has harnessed powerful and unprecedented technologies to entice, engage, and ultimately ensnare youth and teens.” The complaint argues the company “has ignored the sweeping damage these platforms have caused to the mental and physical health of our nation’s youth.” (RELATED: Suing Social Media Won’t Save the Children — But It Could Silence Everyone)

That’s some moxie, to blame a single company for damaging the mental health of 73-million American minors. But leave it to state prosecutors to reach for the stars.

How can a company function if every cool new design feature is further proof that it’s hell-bent on addicting users?

Meanwhile, 25 other states also are pursuing cases, with more litigation — public and private — certain to follow. It’s hard to see how companies that simply provide a service that people like to use can be blamed for every societal ill, including teens’ lack of self-esteem, eating disorders and depression. But that’s where we’re at, as prosecutors attack the firms for including features that make them entertaining and useful. Why, yes, social media can be addictive, but so can almost anything from fast-food restaurants to driving to reading newspapers. The litigation is not confined to progressive states. It appears to be the nation’s latest social panic. (RELATED: Don’t Sue the Mirror)

Noting that Section 230 of the federal Communications Decency Act has stopped prosecutors from filing lawsuits based on speech and content issues, Reason magazine’s Elizabeth Nolan Brown explains that “state prosecutors have gotten creative” by “claiming that this isn’t about user-generated speech but about tech companies’ product design. In this case, the states claim that providing photo filters is contributing to teens’ body dysmorphia and that ‘psychologically manipulative’ features like displaying post ‘like’ counts….”

This sounds like suing auto manufacturers for including features — heated seats, automatic transmissions, adaptive cruise control and satellite radio — that encourage people to drive. After all, nearly 37,000 Americans died in vehicle collisions in 2025, so the manufacturers must be to blame for designing cars in a way that makes them comfortable and enticing enough to spend hours at a time on the road. Then again, I suppose I shouldn’t give state AGs any more clever ideas.

Nolan Brown makes some other apt comparisons: “If Meta and other Big Tech companies are guilty of ‘addicting’ users simply by designing highly appealing products … then basically any industry, religious practice, leisure space, or lifestyle program could be guilty, too.” I’m personally addicted to motorcycle riding and pizza consumption, but I actually like that Harley-Davidson’s V-twins make an intoxicating rumble and that the local pizzeria makes a garlic-infused sauce that I can’t resist. It should go without saying, but I’m responsible for moderating my riding and eating habits.

At some point Americans — and our court system— need to act like adults and recognize that every technological advancement offers costs and benefits and that the best way to minimize the downsides in a free society is to encourage people to use new technologies in a responsible manner and accept the consequences when they don’t. Regarding social media and children, tech companies have provided endless tools for parents to control their kids’ usage. Our entire system of government is based on the idea that individuals and families are responsible for their own behavior, so it’s unclear why the latest media trends should cause us to abandon that sound principle. (RELATED: Parents Have Everything They Need to Keep Their Children Safe Online)

Certainly, everyone wants to protect children and teens, whose brains are still developing and aren’t known for always making sound judgments. But who really believes that hundreds of millions of dollars spent on government-directed youth-treatment services will appreciably improve the mental health of young people? These lawsuits seem mainly designed to score big payouts that will yield few positive results. And forcing companies to redesign their products based on the demands of trial attorneys and prosecutors heads into dangerous territory.

It’s actually quite difficult to directly tie teen social problems to social media. It’s been a long time since I was a teen in the 1970s. That was long before cellphones and personal computers, but I suffered from all the same common symptoms that the anti-social-media crusaders point to in our modern era: awkwardness, loneliness, a lack of self-esteem and insecurity. Anxieties and trouble fitting in are standard adolescent fare. Social media likely has exacerbated these conditions, but changes in family life and other societal trends play a role, too.

Our modern society tends to over-diagnose everything, so the measurement of teen mental-health problems likely is skewed, notes the Cato Institute’s Adam Omary. That’s a good point given that many conditions didn’t even have names in previous eras. He highlights an often-overlooked reality: “Meanwhile, youth have been doing better on many other outcomes: less crime, less smoking, less drug use, fewer teen pregnancies and fewer high school dropouts.”

Practically speaking, these state lawsuits speak to the pressing need for a federal approach toward social-media regulation that provides protections similar to those in the Section 230 law. How can a company function if every cool new design feature is further proof that it’s hell-bent on addicting users? How can an industry survive — let alone one that’s so vital to our economy — if any of the millions of its product users can blame their mental-health problems on these platforms?

Maybe it’s time to stop viewing innovations as public nuisances and start taking responsibility for our own lives.

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Steven Greenhut is Western region director for the R Street Institute. Write to him at [email protected].