A team of state attorneys general is investigating photo-sharing platform Instagram and its effects on children and teenagers, saying its parent company Facebook – now known as Meta Platforms – ignored internal research on the physical and mental health dangers it poses to young people.
The investigation is led by a bipartisan coalition of attorney generals from California, Florida, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Nebraska, New Jersey, Tennessee and Vermont. It follows The Wall Street Journal’s first, damned articles, based on the company’s own research showing that the company knows about the harm Instagram can do to teenagers – especially teenage girls – when it comes to mental health and body image issues.
Since those first reports, a collection of news organizations, including The Associated Press, have published their own findings based on leaked documents from the whistleblower. Frances Haugen, who testified before Parliament and a British parliamentary committee about what she found.
“Too long, Meta overlooked the devastation Instagram is having on the mental health and well-being of our children and youth,” said California Attorney General Rob Bonta. “Enough is enough. We conducted this nationwide investigation to get answers about Meta’s efforts to promote the use of this social media platform among young people in California – and to determine if Meta broke the law.”
The goals of the investigation are the techniques Meta uses to keep young people on its platform – and the harms that prolonged time on Instagram can cause.
In a statement, Meta spokeswoman Liza Crenshaw called the accusations “untrue” and said they demonstrate “a profound misunderstanding of the facts.”
“While the challenges of protecting young people online affect the entire industry, we have led the industry in combating bullying and supporting those struggling with suicidal ideation, self-injury, and self-injury. and eating disorders,” Crenshaw said in the statement.
The state’s investigations follow an announcement Monday that Ohio’s largest employee pension fund sued Meta, alleging that it violated federal securities laws by knowingly misleading the the public about the negative impact of social platforms and the algorithms that operate them.
The Ohio Public Retirement System lawsuit claims that Facebook buried inconvenient findings about how the company had managed those algorithms and the steps it said it had taken to protect the public.
