In today’s episode of ‘Won’t Someone Think of the Children?!’, celebrity attorney David Boies is leading a baseless charge against Meta, claiming Instagram is inherently harmful to kids. Spoiler alert: it’s not. This one was filed last month and covered in the Washington Post, though without a link to the complaint, because the Washington Post hates you. In exchange, I won’t link to the Washington Post story, but directly to the complaint.
The fact that David Boies is involved should already ring alarm bells. Remember, Boies and his firm, Boies Schiller Flexner, have been involved in messes like running a surveillance operation against Harvey Weinstein’s accusers. He worked with RFK Jr. trying to silence bloggers for their criticism. He was also on Theranos’ board and was part of the campaign of that company to punish whistleblowers.
Indeed, Boies’s string of very icky connections and practices has resulted in many lawyers leaving his firm to avoid the association.
So, I’m sorry, but in general, it’s difficult to believe that a lawsuit like this is anything more than a blatant publicity and money grab when David Boies is involved. He doesn’t exactly have a track record of supporting the little guy.
And looking at the actual complaint does little to take away from that first impression. I’m not going to go through all of this again, but we’ve spent the past few years debunking the false claim that social media is inherently harmful to children. The research simply does not support this claim at all.
Yes, there is some evidence that kids are facing a mental health crisis. However, the actual research from actual experts suggests it’s a combination of factors causing it, none of which really appear to be social media. Part of it may be the lack of spaces for kids to be kids. Part of it may be more awareness of mental health issues, and new guidelines encouraging doctors to look for and report such issues. Part of it may be the fucking times we live in.
Blaming social media is not supported by the data. It’s the coward’s way out. It’s old people screaming at the clouds about the kids these days, without wanting to put in the time and resources to solve actual problems.
It’s totally understandable that parents with children in crisis are concerned. They should be! It’s horrible. But misdiagnosing the problem doesn’t help. It just placates adults without solving the real underlying issues.
But this entire lawsuit is based on this false premise, with some other misunderstandings sprinkled in along the way. While the desire to protect kids is admirable, this misguided lawsuit will only make it harder to address the real issues affecting young people’s mental health.
The lawsuit is bad. It’s laughably, sanctionably bad. It starts out with the typical nonsense moral panic comparing social media to actually addictive substances.
This country universally bans minor access to other addictive products, like tobacco and alcohol, because of the physical and psychological damage such products can inflict. Social media is no different, and Meta’s own documents prove that it knows its products harm children. Nonetheless, Meta has done nothing to improve its social media products or limit their access to young users.
First of all, no, the country does not “universally ban” minor access to all addictive products. Sugar is also somewhat addictive, and we do not ban it. But, more importantly, social media is not a substance. It’s speech. And we don’t ban access to speech. It’s like an immediate tell. Any time someone compares social media to actual poisons and toxins, you know they’re full of shit.
Second, the “documentation” that everyone uses to claim that Meta “knows its products harm children” is the various studies which they used as part of an internal research team trying to help make the products safer and better for kids.
But because the media (and grandstanding fools like Boies) falsely portray it as “oh they knew about it!”, they are guaranteeing that no internet company will ever study this stuff ever again. The reason to study it was to try to minimize the impact. But the fact that it leads to ridiculously misleading headlines and now lawsuits means that the best thing for companies to do is never try to fix things.
Much of the rest of this is just speculative nonsense about how features like “likes” and notifications are somehow inherently damaging to kids based on feels.
Meta is aware that the developing brains of young users are particularly vulnerable to certain forms of manipulation, and it affirmatively chooses to exploit those vulnerabilities through targeted features such as recommendation algorithms; social comparison functions such as “Likes,” “Live,” and “Reels”; audiovisual and haptic alerts (that recall young users to Instagram, even while at school and late in the night); visual filter features known to promote young users’ body dysmorphia; and content-presentation formats (such as infinite scroll) designed to discourage young users’ attempts to self-regulate and disengage from Instagram.
It amazes me how many of these discussions focus on “infinite scroll” as if it is obviously evil. I’ve yet to see any data that supports that claim. It’s just taken on faith. And, of course, the underlying issue with “infinite scroll” is not the scroll, but the content. If there were no desirable content, no “infinite scroll” is going to keep people on any platform.
So what they’re really complaining about is “this content is too desirable.”
And that’s not against the law.
Research shows that young people’s use of Meta’s products is associated with depression, anxiety, insomnia, interference with education and daily life, and other negative outcomes. Indeed, Meta’s own internal research demonstrates that use of Instagram results in such harms, and yet it has done nothing to lessen those harms and has failed to issue any meaningful warnings about its products or limit youth access. Instead, Meta has encouraged parents to allow their children to use Meta’s products, publicly contending that banning children from Instagram will cause “social ostracization.”
Again, this is false and misleading. Note that they say “associated” with those things, because no study has shown any causal reaction. The closest they’ve come is that those who are already dealing with depression and anxiety may choose to use social media more often. And that is an issue, and one that should be dealt with. But insisting that social media is inherently harmful to kids won’t help. The actual studies show that for most kids, it’s either neutral or helpful.
Supplying harmful products to children is unlawful in every jurisdiction in this country, under both state and federal law and basic principles of products liability. And yet, that is what Meta does every hour of every day of every year
This is nonsense. It’s not the product that’s harmful. It’s that there’s a moral panic full of boomers like Boies who don’t understand modern technology and want to blame Facebook for kids not liking them. Over and over again this issue has been studied and it has been shown that there is no inherent harm from social media. Claiming otherwise is what could do real harm to children by telling them the thing that they rely on every day to socialize with friends and find information is somehow evil and must be stopped.
Indeed, actual researchers have found that the real crisis for teens these days is the lack of social spaces where kids can be kids. Removing social media from those kids would only make that problem worse.
So, instead, we have a lawsuit backed by some of the most famous lawyers on the planet, pushing a nonsense, conspiracy-theory-laden moral panic. They argue that because kids like Instagram, Meta must be punished.
There’s a lot more in the actual lawsuit, but it only gets dumber.
If this lawsuit succeeds, it will be fair game on basically any popular app that kids like. This is a recipe for disaster. We will see tons of lawsuits, and apps aggressively blocking kids from using their services, cutting off tons of kids who would find those services useful and not problematic. It will also cut off kids from ways of communicating with family and friends, as well as researching information and learning about the world.
