After a series of legal losses in recent months, Meta is facing another landmark trial this week, as a lawsuit brought by the attorneys general of 29 states in 2023 is set to go to court in Oakland, California, on Tuesday. The lawsuit alleges that Meta “designed and deployed harmful and psychologically manipulative product features to induce young users’ compulsive and extended platform use, while falsely assuring the public that its features were safe and suitable for young users.” While Meta naturally denies the allegations, arguing that it is constantly working on safeguards that protect young users, surveys suggest that social media use does in fact have a detrimental effect on young people’s well-being. Whether or not Meta can be held legally accountable for any potential harm caused by its platforms is now once more up for the courts to decide.
In a survey of U.S. teens conducted by the Pew Research Center in the fall of 2024, 48 percent of Americans aged 13 to 17 said that social media has a mostly negative effect on people of their age, up from just 32 percent two years earlier. Only 11 percent of teenagers in the U.S. described the impact of social media as mostly positive, with mental health a key concern for both teens and their parents. 55 percent of surveyed parents said that they’re extremely or very concerned about the mental health of teenagers, while 35 percent of teens said the same about their own generation.
When asked to name the single biggest threat to their own/their children’s mental health, teens and parents were both most likely to name social media as the one thing that impacts teens’ mental health most negatively. While 44 percent of parents saw social media as the number one threat to their children’s mental wellbeing, 22 percent of teenagers said the same, with bullying and outside pressure/expectations also high on their minds. “They live in a fake world of social media that limits them as human beings, distancing them from their family,” one concerned mother said about today’s teenagers, while a teenage boy said that constantly being exposed to other people’s opinions on social media was a big problem for his generation and that overuse of social media appeared to be the main cause of depression among people of his age.
