New York City sues social media networks for fueling the youth mental health crisis

The tremendous efforts of New York City to stop the epidemic of incidents carried out by people with mental disorders — on the subway, on the streets, inside homes, in an unstoppable wave after the pandemic — have found a new outlet. On Wednesday, the city filed a lawsuit against the owners of TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat and YouTube for fueling the national youth mental health crisis, said Mayor Eric Adams.

The lawsuit, filed in California Superior Court by the City of New York, the Department of Education and the New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation, on which strained mental health services depend, alleges that these companies intentionally manipulate and create addiction among younger users, keeping them glued to their screens and causing undesirable behavioral effects that are ultimately harmful to the development of their personality.

The accusation is based on three counts, according to the laws of the State of New York: negligence, gross negligence and public nuisance. The plaintiffs are asking for a jury trial, changes in the companies’ policies and financial relief. According to the complaint, the behavioral disorders allegedly caused by addiction to these platforms have led to additional financial burden and a mental health crisis for the city, with repercussions on schools, hospitals and other systems. In a news conference, Adams described New York teenagers as permanently desperate and anxious, glued to their phones and performing poorly in school, in addition to losing social skills as a result of addiction to screens.

Tackling the mental ailments that afflict homeless people in New York has been a headache for Mayor Adams from the beginning of his term. The city has tried everything, from reinforcing police patrols in the subway to the forced confinement in institutions of people with clear symptoms of mental imbalance, a measure that has been highly criticized by non-profits, experts and relatives of those affected. But targeting technology companies is a new move, especially in a city built “on innovation and technology,” as Adams said in a statement.

“This lawsuit and action plan are part of a larger reckoning that will shape the lives of our young people, our city, and our society for years to come,” said the mayor.

New York is not, however, a pioneer when it comes to concerns over the effects of technology. In the absence of new federal laws to protect children on the internet, or at least regulations that adapt to the rapid pace of innovation, lawsuits to hold companies accountable, filed by districts, are becoming more frequent across the country. The Seattle public school network and a couple of California counties, among others, filed suits months ago. So have groups of parents who claim that their children have been harmed by social media platforms. In October, attorneys from 41 states jointly denounced Meta. One of the arguments on which these claims are based is that tech companies deliberately create addiction, just like the tobacco industry once did with the use of additives.

Some of the companies targeted by this latest legal move have responded. Meta said it has “more than 30 tools and features” to support teens and their parents. “We’ve spent a decade working on these issues and hiring people who have dedicated their careers to keeping young people safe and supported online,” said Andy Stone, spokesperson for Meta, in response to the lawsuit, the terms of which he considers unfounded. “In collaboration with youth, mental health and parenting experts, we have created services and policies to provide youth with age-appropriate experiences and parents with robust controls.”

“TikTok has industry-leading safeguards to support teens’ well-being, including age-restricted features, parental controls, an automatic 60-minute time limit for users under 18, and more,” a spokesperson for the company told the news site Axios.

The recent hearings in Washington involving the heads of the technology companies Meta, TikTok, X, Snap and Discord, the last in a long list, is the most immediate precedent for the New York lawsuit, but not the only one. At the hearing, members of Congress grilled executives for four hours about children’s online safety. The social outcry triggered by an investigation that once found Instagram, Meta’s social media platform, responsible for harming the mental health of adolescents with impossible beauty models seems far away now. Since then, the focus on artificial intelligence — a topic that was not addressed in the Congressional hearing on January 31, as a specific session had already been dedicated to it — has reached such speed that its own dynamics can overwhelm any attempt to regulate or protect content aimed at minors and adolescents.

Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get more English-language news coverage from EL PAÍS USA Edition