NYC sues social media companies over keeping kids scrolling in 'flow state'

MANHATTAN (CN) — New York City accused the companies behind Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok and YouTube of designing their social media platforms to be addictive to young users, spurring a mental health crisis that has burdened city resources, in a federal public nuisance lawsuit Wednesday.

“Borrowing heavily from the behavioral and neurobiological techniques used in slot machines and exploited by the cigarette industry, defendants deliberately embedded in their platforms an array of design features aimed at maximizing youth engagement to drive advertising revenue,” the city wrote in a 327-page lawsuit filed in the Southern District of New York.

The city says the companies — Meta, Snap, ByteDance and Google — knew kids and adolescents are particularly vulnerable to the addictive effects of such features and targeted them anyway to drive profits.

For example, serving users and “endless feed” keeps them scrolling in a “flow state,” while “intermittent variable rewards” alter dopamine release, intensifying use. Platforms also dole out “trophies” to reward maximal usage and push notifications incessantly, encouraging repetitive account-checking by “manufacturing insecurity.”

Pointing to a national crisis, New York said social media platforms have triggered depression, anxiety, eating disorders, self-harm, and suicidality among thousands of children, including youth in New York City, who fall under the plaintiff city’s care.

Over one-third of kids ages 13 to 17 nationwide report using one of the defendants’ platforms “almost constantly,” the city claims in the lawsuit, yet more than half say they would struggle to cut back. Locally, citing 2021 numbers, the city said more than 77% of New York City high school students reported spending an average of three or more hours per school day in front of a screen.

“Instead of feeding coins into slot machines, kids are feeding defendants’ platforms with an endless supply of attention, time, and data,” the city writes.

The city asked the federal court to issue an injunction against “further actions causing or contributing to the public nuisance” described in the lawsuit.

In a statement provided to Courthouse News, Google spokesperson José Castañeda said the lawsuit and others like it “fundamentally misunderstand how YouTube works” and that “the allegations are simply not true.”

The remaining defendant tech companies didn’t immediately return requests for comment.

A separate, nationwide lawsuit making similar claims of social media addiction is playing out in federal court in California. There, attorneys general from several dozen states are in the discovery phase in their 2023 lawsuit, which was trimmed earlier this year.

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