Pa. County Sues Platforms for Funds to Treat Rising Youth Mental Health Issues

Defendants Meta, Google, Snap and ByteDance “intentionally design” their social media platforms to entice “still developing minors” into spending “ever increasing amounts of time on their platforms,” alleged the Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, district attorney in a Wednesday complaint (docket 3:23-cv-01283) on behalf of the county and commonwealth in U.S. District Court for Middle Pennsylvania in Scranton.

Addicting teenage users with “bottomless scrolling,” push notifications and live videos are some of the features defendants use to “entice” them to use the social media apps more frequently "and stay engaged on the platform for longer periods of time," the complaint said. Defendants spend "exorbitant sums” marketing their platforms to teen and adolescent users “because they are willing to endanger those same users to increase their [advertising] revenues,” it said.

Social media companies use “complex data analytics, artificial intelligence and algorithms to create features designed to maximize time users spend on their apps," and they’ve been “extremely effective” in marketing themselves to minors, said the complaint. It cited a 2018 study saying 90% of kids 13-17 used some form of social media, 40% of 8-to-12-year-olds and nearly a third of kids 7-9.

Defendants know “the most harmful content is also the highest driver of user engagement,” the complaint said. Because of that, their algorithms regularly push that type of content to users, who, “but for Defendants’ actions would never see such content,” it said. Defendants “hide the addictive nature of their platforms” by “avoiding calls for transparency, obscuring the nature of advertisements and making demonstrably misleading or flat-out false statements” about measures they take to “guarantee user safety,” it said.

Luzerne County, with 76 municipalities and about 48,629 students ages 5-17, has been “uniquely harmed” by the current “youth mental health crisis” caused by defendants’ platforms, said the complaint. The county has had to provide funds for first responders, mental health and crisis services, suicide prevention programs and peer and family support due to social media companies’ actions; it also had to hire more personnel to fix property damaged by youths “acting out” according to social media conduct. It invested in multiple school-based programs to address mental health issues its students are facing, and despite the “significant investments made,” county service providers “continue to struggle to treat the ever-growing number of students seeking services.”

The county asserts claims of public nuisance, negligence and violation of Pennsylvania’s Unfair Trade Practices and Consumer Protection Act (UTPCPL). It seeks orders that defendants are jointly and severally liable, that they abate the public nuisance described, that they take steps to obtain “verifiable parental consent” before collecting and using information about them; and that they're enjoined from further violations of the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act. The county seeks civil penalties of $1,000 for each UTPCPL violation; an order that defendants disgorge and forfeit all profits they derived from their “unfair and deceptive acts;” equitable relief to fund education and treatment programs for excessive use of social media; plus actual, statutory and compensatory damages; attorneys’ fees; and court costs.