Meta must face Instagram public nuisance case, Massachusetts high court says

BOSTON, Mass. (CN) — Massachusetts’ top court on Friday refused to throw out a state lawsuit against tech giant Meta over claims that Instagram caused harmful social media addiction in children in pursuit of its goals of maximizing advertising profits.

The seven-justice panel of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court denied a motion by Meta Platforms and Instagram to dismiss a complaint brought against them by the commonwealth after state regulators accused them of knowingly inducing compulsive Instagram use in children and teens.

Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell called the appellate ruling: “a major step in holding these companies accountable for practices that have fueled the youth mental health crisis and put profits over kids. “

“Big tech companies like Meta have designed platforms that harm young people, all while downplaying the risks,” she said in a statement Friday. “I filed this lawsuit to demand safer online spaces for our young people – and I won’t stop fighting for them.”

Meta Platforms, which owns Instagram, is also the parent company of Facebook. The company did not respond to a request for comment by press time.

Massachusetts regulators say Instagram’s design is detrimental to health and well-being and that the company misled the public about the platform’s dangers, thus creating a public nuisance.

In a 2023 complaint, the state argued Instagram deliberately causes addiction in children through design features such as frequent notifications, fast-expiring content, infinite scrolls and autoplay features. They say these features strategically triggered dopamine releases and were designed to induce FOMO or “fear of missing out.”

The result, according to regulators: depression, anxiety, altered brain structures and a statewide mental health crisis.

The office of Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell sued Instagram’s parent company under laws prohibiting unfair and deceptive trade practices and public nuisances.

Instagram argued the complaint was barred by Section 230 of the federal Communications Decency Act, a law passed by Congress in 1996 to protect internet providers from liability for what third parties post on their platforms. But a lower court disagreed, teeing up an appeal by Instagram.

On appeal, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court concluded that Section 230 — which for decades has shielded social media companies from lawsuits related to content hosted on their platforms — does not protect Instagram from claims arising from the company’s own design features and business practices.

“The claims do not seek to impose liability on Meta for information provided by third parties,” Justice Dalila Wendlandt wrote in a 50-page order. “Instead, the claims allege harm stemming from Meta’s own conduct, either by designing a social media platform that capitalizes on the developmental vulnerabilities of children or by affirmatively misleading consumers about the safety of the Instagram platform."

In their order, the high court wrote: “We decline Meta’s invitation to read [Section 230] immunity so broadly.”

Section 230, the court noted, includes a carve-out for state law claims. A provision reads, “Nothing in this section shall be construed to prevent any state from enforcing any state law that is consistent with this section.”

Massachusetts’ claims echo a civil lawsuit from an anonymous plaintiff in Los Angeles, who recently argued in a first-of-its-kind trial that tech companies had  “engineered addiction in children’s brains.”

A Los Angeles jury found the companies liable for harms to the plaintiff, a 20-year-old woman referred to in court documents as Kaley GM. That woman said social media had become a daily obsession for her, causing depression, anxiety and body dysmorphia.

The jury ordered two companies to pay Kaley $6 million, including $3 million in punitive damages. Meta was ordered to pay 70%, while Google — which operates YouTube — was ordered to pay 30%.

Testifying at the trial, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg defended the high number of under-13-year-old users on the app. He insisted that the company did not have a goal of deliberately increasing screen time.

Rolling back Section 230 has become a broadly bipartisan issue in Congress, as lawmakers grapple with their missteps in regulating the nascent internet and tech industries in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

Democratic Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin’s Sunset Section 230 Act legislation, introduced in December, is cosponsored by Republican South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham, who has been a leading voice on Capitol Hill for protecting minors online.

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