Lawsuits Take Meta to Task Over Children’s Wellbeing

FEATURING HALEY HINKLE - Meta, the company that owns Facebook and Instagram, and whose founder Mark Zuckerberg has become a caricature in Hollywood films, faces its biggest challenge as a massive lawsuit brought by four state attorneys general began this week in federal court. The lawsuit claims Meta violated a federal online privacy act aimed at protecting children. If found liable, Meta could be ordered to pay up to $200 billion in damages. 

The suit comes on the heels of a landmark lawsuit in New Mexico where a judge just ordered Meta to pay nearly $1 billion in fines over repeated violations of New Mexico’s consumer protection laws. Following that suit, New Mexico Attorney General Raul Torrez has proposed legislation to protect children from social media. 

Haley Hinkle is Policy Counsel for Fairplay, a leading nonprofit aimed at helping children thrive in a commercialized, screen-obsessed culture, and the only organization dedicated to ending marketing to children. She advocates for policies and enforcement actions to protect children and teens’ privacy and safety online. Haley spoke with Sonali Kolhatkar about the lawsuits facing Meta.

ROUGH TRANSCRIPT:

Sonali Kolhatkar: Before we talk about the federal lawsuit, let's talk about what's been happening in New Mexico. So I understand there were sort of two separate judgments that now add up to orders of 900-something million dollars in fines. Why did New Mexico bring that lawsuit? What was it mainly aimed at, and is it a precedent-setting lawsuit? 

Haley Hinkle: Yes. The state of New Mexico brought the lawsuit, like many states across the country, against Meta really to address the harms, particularly the mental health harms and online safety harms that children are facing on major tech platforms. In this case, in particular, Instagram, but also Meta's other major platforms, including Facebook and WhatsApp. 

The trial was in two parts, really one focused on whether children and their families were adequately warned of the risks that they faced on Meta's products, in particular on Instagram. And then the other major part, the second phase of the trial, was focused on the impact on the state overall, as a result of the really mental health consequences of children using Instagram. 

And it really has been groundbreaking in many ways. We have seen a jury, for the second time this year, really declare that Meta failed to adequately warn children and their families about the risks of their products. And the public nuisance claims are the first we've seen across the country where a state is saying, in general, "You have created a burden on families, on our resources, our education system, our health system, in the way that you have treated children." And so in that sense, this really is groundbreaking, and also an affirmation of what many families have been experiencing and concerned about with Instagram for years.