New York City has sued TikTok, Facebook, and YouTube for allegedly harming children’s mental health.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams announced Wednesday that his administration has sued TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, and YouTube’s parent firms for harming young adults and children’s mental health.

Attorneys claimed that the city of New York, the school system, and health groups brought the complaint to the Los Angeles County branch of the California Superior Court due to the corporations’ local links.
The lawsuit argues that Meta, Snap, ByteDance, and Alphabet’s Google willfully created, developed, produced, ran, promoted, distributed, and sold platforms to target and addict minors without parental control.

The plaintiffs claim the tech corporations violated city public nuisance and gross negligence statutes by designing and promoting addictive goods. They argue that children’s mental health issues caused by social media use have significantly harmed New York’s school systems and health and social services.

“Over the past ten years, we have seen just how seductive and daunting the online world can be, introducing our kids to a non-stop stream of toxic content and fueling our national adolescent mental wellness crisis,” Adams said. “We’re boldly holding these firms responsible for their involvement in this problem and expanding on our efforts to fix it on behalf of millions of New Yorkers. this public health hazard. This lawsuit as an action plan is part of a wider reckoning that will impact our youth, community, and society for decades to come.”

An official from TikTok said the firm had “industry-leading safeguards” for adolescents, including parental controls and age limitations.
The spokesman said, We engage with professionals to understand developing standards and will continue to tackle industry-wide problems to keep the public safe.

A Google official claimed the claims are “simply not true.”

“Providing young people with a safer, healthier encounter online has always been core to our work,” Google added. “We’ve developed programs and policies with youth, mental health, and parenting professionals to provide kids age-appropriate experiences and parents robust restrictions..”
Meta has “spent a decade focusing on these issues” and wants “teens to have safe, age-appropriate interactions online, and we have over 30 features and instruments to support them and their parents.”

A Snap representative claimed “Snapchat was deliberately created to be different from typical social media,” focused on close friend talks.

Instead of a stream of information that encourages idle browsing, Snapchat opens immediately to a camera and has no public likes or comments, a spokeswoman explained. While we are bound to have more work to do, we feel good about how Snapchat helps close friends feel connected, joyful, and prepared for adolescence.

New York’s complaint mirrors the 2022 Northern District of California case against Meta, Snap, TikTok, and Alphabet. Multiple school districts and people say the corporations’ products “are flawed because they have been created to maximize screen time” and have caused emotional and bodily injuries, including death.

Lawmakers promoting several proposals like the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) to regulate social media firms have criticized them. At a Senate Judiciary hearing in late January, bipartisan legislators questioned Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew, and Snap CEO Evan Spiegel about their alleged child protection neglect.

Over 40 attorneys general sued Meta in federal court, arguing its products are addictive and harmful to mental health.