NEW YORK—The government of New York City, the citywide school district and its healthcare system today sued the parent companies of social media platforms for allegedly fueling a mental health crisis among the city’s minors by addicting them to social media.
Filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, the 327-page-long suit seeks damages from Meta Platforms (the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp), Alphabet (the parent company of YouTube and Google), Snap Inc. (the parent company of Snapchat), and TikTok owner ByteDance.
Central to this complaint is the argument that social media was designed to be addictive. There is a lack of scientific consensus surrounding “social media addiction.” The American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition, doesn’t currently list social media addiction as a mental disorder.
As AVN has previously reported, this draws parallels to the claims that pornography is addictive. Again, no diagnosis exists for “pornography addiction,” as the scientific consensus around such a claim is lacking. Some critics consider pornography addiction to be simply pseudoscience, lacking a medical basis.
However, the suit by New York City is the latest of over 2,000 similar lawsuits currently in multidistrict litigation at a federal district court in Oakland, California. Of all the plaintiffs suing the technology companies behind the major social media and tech platforms, New York City is the largest, with a population of nearly 8.5 million people.
“Defendants should be held to account for the harms their conduct has inflicted,” the city explained in the complaint. “As it stands now, plaintiffs are left to abate the nuisance and foot the bill.”
Social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram are popular tools for marketing among adult content creators, producers and studios. YouTube has also seen many adult content creators and performers turn to video and audio podcasting and sharing safe-for-work videos as a part of their wider media portfolios.
