Providence Lawsuit Over Social Media

Case 1:23-cv-00170-MSM-PAS Document 1 Filed 04/28/23 Page 1 of 66 PageID #: 1
UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

DISTRICT OF RHODE ISLAND
CITY OF PROVIDENCE, Civil Action No. 1:23-cv-170
Plaintiff,
DEMAND FOR JURY TRIAL
v.
META PLATFORMS, INC., FACEBOOK

HOLDINGS, LLC, FACEBOOK
OPERATIONS, LLC, META PAYMENTS
INC., META PLATFORMS
TECHNOLOGIES, LLC, INSTAGRAM,
LLC, SICULUS, INC., SNAP INC., TIKTOK
INC., TIKTOK LTD., TIKTOK LLC,
BYTEDANCE INC., BYTEDANCE LTD.,
ALPHABET INC., XXVI HOLDINGS INC.,
GOOGLE LLC, and YOUTUBE, LLC.
Defendants.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
I. INTRODUCTION .............................................................................................................. 1
II. JURISDICTION AND VENUE ......................................................................................... 5
III. PARTIES ......................................................................................................................... 5
Plaintiff ................................................................................................................... 5
Meta Defendants ..................................................................................................... 6
Snap Defendant ....................................................................................................... 8
TikTok Defendants ................................................................................................. 8
YouTube Defendants .............................................................................................. 9
IV. FACTUAL BACKGROUND ........................................................................................... 10
Meta’s Purposefully Manipulative and Addictive Social Media
Platform Design .................................................................................................... 11
1. Meta’s Facebook Platform ........................................................................ 13
2. Meta’s Instagram Platform ....................................................................... 20
YouTube’s Purposefully Manipulative and Addictive Design ......................... 26
Snapchat’s Purposefully Manipulative and Addictive Design .......................... 29
TikTok’s Purposefully Manipulative and Addictive Design ............................ 34
V. DEFENDANTS’ BUSINESS MODELS MAXIMIZE USER SCREEN
TIME, FUELING ADDICTION ...................................................................................... 38
VI. DEFENDANTS HAVE CHOSEN DESIGNS THAT ADDICT MINORS
TO THEIR PLATFORMS ................................................................................................ 41
VII. DEFENDANTS’ PLATFORMS CAUSE HARM TO MINORS .................................... 45
Defendants Encourage and Cause Increased Usage of Their Platforms
by Minors .............................................................................................................. 45
Minors’ Brains Are Particularly Susceptible to Manipulation
by Defendants ....................................................................................................... 48
Defendants Have Caused a Significant Mental Health Toll on Minors................ 51
Defendants’ Conduct Has Harmed the City of Providence and Its Schools ......... 53
VIII. THE COMMUNICATIONS DECENCY ACT ALLOWS COMPUTER SERVICE
COMPANIES TO LIMIT HARMFUL CONTENT ......................................................... 57
IX. CLAIMS FOR RELIEF .................................................................................................... 58
X. REQUEST FOR RELIEF ................................................................................................. 63
XI. JURY TRIAL DEMANDED ............................................................................................ 63
i
Plaintiff City of Providence, Rhode Island brings this action against the following Defendant
Social Media Companies and their affiliates and subsidiaries: Meta Platforms, Inc.; Facebook
Holdings, LLC; Facebook Operations, LLC; (collectively referred to as “Facebook”); Meta
Payments Inc.; Meta Platforms Technologies, LLC; Instagram, LLC (“Instagram”); Siculus, Inc.
(collectively, Facebook, Instagram, and Siculus Inc. are referred to as “Meta”); Snap Inc.
(“Snapchat”); TikTok Inc.; TikTok Ltd.; TikTok LLC; ByteDance Inc.; ByteDance Ltd.
(collectively, the TikTok and ByteDance entities are referred to as “TikTok”); Alphabet Inc.;
XXVI Holdings Inc.; Google LLC; and YouTube, LLC (collectively, the Alphabet, XXVI,
Google, and YouTube entities are referred to as “YouTube”) (collectively, “Defendants” or
“Defendant Social Media Companies”).
I. INTRODUCTION
1. Today’s youth are experiencing a mental health crisis fueled by the Defendant
Social Media Companies, who are ruthlessly seeking to maximize profits at any cost and with
callous disregard for the harm that their platforms cause to minors’ mental and behavioral health.
2. Over the last two decades, across the country, including within the City of
Providence, an astounding number of adolescents have begun to suffer from poor mental health
and behavioral disorders. Indeed, according to the CDC, “[b]etween 2007 and 2018, the national
suicide rate among persons aged 10-24 increased 57.4%.”1
3. In 2021, the U.S. Surgeon General issued an advisory alerting the public that
“[r]ecent national surveys of young people have shown alarming increases in the prevalence of
certain mental health challenges” and that “[i]n 2019 one in three high school students and half of
1
Sally C. Curtin, M.A., State Suicide Rates Among Adolescents and Young Adults Aged 10-24: Untied States, 2000-
2018, CDC (Sept 11, 2020), https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr69/nvsr-69-11-508.pdf (last visited Apr. 11,
2023.
female students reported persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness, an overall increase of 40%
from 2009.”2
4. The current state of youth mental health has led the American Academy of
Pediatrics, the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, and the Children’s
Hospital Association to declare a national emergency.3
5. These dramatic increases in youth mental health deterioration have directly
coincided with the growth of Defendants’ social media platforms, which have exploited the
vulnerable brains of youth, hooking tens of millions of students across the country into feedback
loops, which Defendants know will lead to excessive use (and abuse) of social media.
6. According to research, 90% of children ages 13-17 use social media.4 Even younger
children also regularly use social media, with studies showing 38% of children ages 8-12 use social
media,5 49% of children ages 10-12 use social media, and 32% of children ages 7-9 use social
media.6
7. As a means of increasing revenue as much as possible, Defendants deliberately
design and operate their platforms to maximize users’ screen time. Defendants accomplish this by
building features intended to exploit human psychology, using complex algorithms driven by
advanced artificial intelligence and machine-learning systems.
2
Protecting Youth Mental Health, U.S. Surgeon General Advisory (Apr. 11, 2023),
https://www.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/surgeon-general-youth-mental-health-advisory.pdf.
3
AAP-AACAP-CHA Declaration of a National Emergency in Child and Adolescent Mental Health, Am. Acad.
Pediatrics (Oct. 19, 2021), https://www.aap.org/en/advocacy/child-and-adolescent-healthy-mental-development/aap-
aacap-cha-declaration-of-a-national-emergency-in-child-and-adolescent-mental-health/.
4
Social Media and Teens, Am. Acad. Child & Adolescent Psychiatry (Mar. 2018),
https://www.aacap.org/AACAP/Families_and_Youth/Facts_for_Families/FFF-Guide/Social-Media-and-Teens-
100.aspx.
5
Victoria Rideout et al., The Common Sense Census: Media Use by Tweens and Teens, 2021 at 5, Common Sense
Media (2022), https://www.commonsensemedia.org/sites/default/files/research/report/8-18-census-integrated-report-
final-web_0.pdf.
6
Sharing Too Soon? Children and Social Media Apps, C.S. Mott Children’s Hosp. Univ. Mich. Health (Oct. 18,
2021), https://mottpoll.org/sites/default/files/documents/101821_SocialMedia.pdf.
2
8. As part of this quest to maximize revenue, Defendants exploit adolescent users’
still-developing decision-making capacity, impulse control, emotional maturity, and poor
psychological resiliency.
9. Nobody except the Defendant Social Media Companies could have foreseen this
unprecedented youth mental health crisis. Despite knowing that minors are much more likely to
sustain serious psychological harm through social media use than adults, Defendants knowingly
seek to grow the use of their platforms by minors through designs, algorithms, and policies that
promote addiction, compulsive use, and other severe mental harm—and by thwarting the ability
of parents to keep their children safe and healthy by supervising and limiting social media use.
10. The results of Defendants’ actions have a known effect on minors’ mental health
as “[t]here is a substantial link to depression, and that link tends to be stronger among girls” and
“[t]he same is true for self-harm. . . . ‘The more hours a day she spends using social media, the
more likely she is to engage in self-harm behaviors – the link is there for boys as well.’”7 Moreover,
“[m]ost of the large studies show that heavy users of social media are about twice as likely to be
depressed as light users.”8
11. In fact, the Surgeon General has linked social media’s relentless focus on profits
over safety to the youth mental health crisis, stating that social media’s “[b]usiness models are
often built around maximizing user engagement as opposed to safeguarding users’ health and
ensuring that users engage with one another in safe and healthy ways.”9 President Biden recently
reiterated this conclusion, asserting in his recent 2023 State of the Union address that “social media
companies” must be held “accountable for the experiment they are running on our children for
7
Jennifer A. Kingson, Social media’s effects on teen mental health comes into focus, Axios (Jan. 11, 2023),
https://www.axios.com/2023/01/11/social-media-children-teenagers-mental-health-tiktok-meta-facebook-snapchat.
8
Id.
9
Protecting Youth Mental Health, supra note 2.
3
profit.”10 There is no question that children are facing a growing mental health crisis of epidemic
proportions. And there is similarly no question that Defendants are the cause of this crisis.
12. Plaintiff seeks to hold Defendants responsible for the harm caused by their conduct,
which preys on their youngest and most vulnerable users.
13. Local communities and public schools are on the front lines of the unfair fight
between large corporate Defendants preying on America’s youth and communities attempting to
address the ongoing youth mental health crisis.
14. Indeed, local communities and schools, including Plaintiff and Plaintiff’s schools,
are forced to spend increasing resources as the first responders in an attempt to alleviate the rising
rates of suicidal ideation, depression, anxiety, and other tragic indices of this public health crisis
in minors.
15. This youth mental health crisis is infecting all aspects of education – students
experience record rates of anxiety, depression, and other mental health issues because of
Defendants’ intentional conduct. And these students perform worse in school, are less likely to
attend school, and are more likely to engage in substance use and to act out, all of which directly
affects Plaintiff’s schools’ ability to fulfill their educational mission.
16. That is why Plaintiff’s schools, as part of their mission, and like many schools in
the country, provide mental health services to its students. Plaintiff needs more funding to meet
the ever-growing needs of youth facing this mental health crisis.
17. Plaintiff requires funding to develop a long-term plan to deal with the mental health
crisis and address the record rates of depression, anxiety, suicidal ideation, and the other tragic
10
Remarks of President Joe Biden – State of the Union Address as Prepared for Delivery, White House (Feb. 7, 2023),
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2023/02/07/remarks-of-president-joe-biden-state-of-
the-union-address-as-prepared-for-delivery/.
4
byproducts caused by Defendants. Plaintiff also needs Defendants to be held responsible for their
continued use of algorithms, social media features, and policies that target minors and that
Defendants know are a driving force behind the current mental health crisis for minors in Plaintiff’s
community and public school system, and for Defendants to cease targeting youths for profit.
II. JURISDICTION AND VENUE
18. This Court has jurisdiction pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1331(a) because the amount in
controversy exceeds $75,000.00, and Plaintiff and Defendants are residents and citizens of
different states.
19. The Court has personal jurisdiction over Defendants because they do business in
the District of Rhode Island and have sufficient minimum contacts with the District. Defendants
intentionally avail themselves of the markets in this State through the promotion, marketing, and
operation of their platforms at issue in this lawsuit in Rhode Island, and by retaining the profits
and proceeds from these activities, rendering the exercise of jurisdiction by this Court permissible
under Rhode Island law and the United States Constitution.
20. Venue in this Court is proper under 28 U.S.C. §§ 1391(b)(2) and (3) because a
substantial part of the events or omissions giving rise to the claims at issue in this Complaint arose
in this District and Defendants are subject to the Court’s personal jurisdiction with respect to this
action.
III. PARTIES
Plaintiff
21. Plaintiff City of Providence, Rhode Island (“Plaintiff”) is a municipal corporation
with a principal address of 25 Dorrance Street, Providence, Rhode Island.
22. Plaintiff’s public schools have an enrollment of over 21,000 students.
5
23. The City of Providence provides significant funding for its public schools. For
example, the City of Providence budgeted approximately $134,897,350 for its public schools
(which was an increase of approximately $4.8 million) in Fiscal Year 2022, $130,046,611 in Fiscal
Year 2021, and $130,046,611 in Fiscal Year 2020 (which was an increase of approximately $1.5
million).
Meta Defendants
24. Defendant Meta Platforms, Inc. (“Meta”), formerly known as Facebook, Inc., is a
Delaware corporation with its principal place of business in Menlo Park, California.
25. Defendant Meta develops and maintains social media platforms, communication
platforms, and electronic devices that are widely available to users throughout the United States.
The platforms developed and maintained by Meta include Facebook (including its self-titled app,
Marketplace, and Workplace), Messenger (including Messenger Kids), Instagram, and a line of
electronic virtual reality devices and services called Meta Quest (collectively, “Meta platforms”).
26. Meta transacts or has transacted business in this District and throughout the United
States. At all times material to this Complaint, acting alone or in concert with its subsidiaries
(identified below), Meta has advertised, marketed, and distributed the Meta platforms to
consumers throughout the United States. At all times material to this Complaint, Meta formulated,
directed, controlled, had the authority to control, or participated in the acts and practices set forth
in this Complaint.
27. Defendant Meta’s subsidiaries include: Facebook Holdings, LLC; Facebook
Operations, LLC; Meta Payments, Inc.; Meta Platforms Technologies, LLC; Instagram, LLC; and
Siculus, Inc.
28. Defendant Facebook Holdings, LLC (“Facebook Holdings”) was organized under
the laws of the state of Delaware on March 11, 2020, and is a wholly owned subsidiary of Meta
6
Platforms, Inc. Facebook Holdings is primarily a holding company for entities involved in Meta’s
supporting and international endeavors, and its principal place of business is in Menlo Park,
California. Defendant Meta is the sole member of Facebook Holdings.
29. Defendant Facebook Operations, LLC (“Facebook Operations”) was organized
under the laws of the state of Delaware on January 8, 2010, and is a wholly owned subsidiary of
Meta Platforms, Inc. The principal place of business of Facebook Operations is in Menlo Park,
California. Defendant Meta is the sole member of Facebook Operations.
30. Defendant Meta Payments, Inc. (“Meta Payments”) was incorporated in Florida on
December 10, 2010, as Facebook Payments Inc. In July 2022, the entity’s name was amended to
Meta Payments, Inc. Meta Payments is a wholly owned subsidiary of Meta Platforms, Inc. Meta
Payments manages, secures, and processes payments made through Meta, among other activities,
and its principal place of business is in Menlo Park, California.
31. Defendant Meta Platforms Technologies, LLC (“Meta Technologies”) was
organized under the laws of the state of Delaware as “Oculus VR, LLC” on March 21, 2014, and
acquired by Meta on March 25, 2014. In November 2018, the entity’s name was amended to
Facebook Technologies, LLC. In June 2022, the entity’s name was amended again, this time to
Meta Platforms Technologies, LLC. Meta Technologies develops Meta’s virtual and augmented
reality technology, such as the Meta Quest line of services, among other technologies related to
Meta’s platforms, and its principal place of business is in Menlo Park, California. Defendant Meta
is the sole member of Meta Technologies.
32. Defendant Instagram, LLC (“Instagram”) was founded by Kevin Systrom and Mike
Krieger in October 2010. In April 2012, Meta purchased the company for approximately $1 billion.
Meta reformed the limited liability company under the laws of the state of Delaware on April 7,
7
2012, and the company’s principal place of business is in Menlo Park, California. Defendant Meta
is the sole member of Instagram.
33. Defendant Siculus, Inc. (“Siculus”) was incorporated in Delaware on October 19,
2011. Siculus is a wholly owned subsidiary of Meta, which supports Meta platforms by
constructing data facilities and other projects. Siculus’s principal place of business is in Menlo
Park, California.
Snap Defendant
34. Defendant Snap Inc. (“Snap”) is a Delaware corporation with its principal place of
business in Santa Monica, California. Snap transacts or has transacted business in this District and
throughout the United States. At all times material to this Complaint, acting alone or in concert
with others, Snap has advertised, marketed, and distributed the Snapchat social media platform to
consumers throughout the United States. At all times material to this Complaint, Snap formulated,
directed, controlled, had the authority to control, or participated in the acts and practices set forth
in this Complaint.
TikTok Defendants
35. Defendant TikTok Ltd. wholly owns its subsidiary Defendant TikTok LLC
(“TikTok LLC”) which is, and at all relevant times was, a Delaware limited liability company.
36. TikTok LLC wholly owns its subsidiary Defendant TikTok Inc. f/k/a Musical.ly,
Inc. (“TikTok Inc.).
37. TikTok Inc. was incorporated in California on April 30, 2015, with its principal
place of business in Culver City, California. TikTok Inc. transacts or has transacted business in
this District and throughout the United States. At all times material to this Complaint, acting alone
or in concert with others, TikTok Inc. has advertised, marketed, and distributed the TikTok social
media platform to consumers throughout the United States. At all times material to this Complaint,
8
acting alone or in concert with ByteDance Inc., TikTok Inc. formulated, directed, controlled, had
the authority to control, or participated in the acts and practices set forth in this Complaint.
38. Defendant ByteDance Ltd. (“ByteDance Ltd.”) is a global company incorporated
in the Cayman Islands. Its principal place of business is in Beijing, China. ByteDance Ltd. also
maintains offices in the United States, Singapore, India, and the United Kingdom, among other
locations. ByteDance Ltd. wholly owns its subsidiary Defendant ByteDance Inc.
39. ByteDance Inc. (“ByteDance”) is a Delaware corporation with its principal place
of business in Mountain View, California. ByteDance transacts or has transacted business in this
District and throughout the United States. At all times material to this Complaint, acting alone or
in concert with others, ByteDance has advertised, marketed, and distributed the TikTok social
media platform to consumers throughout the United States. At all times material to this Complaint,
acting alone or in concert with TikTok Inc., ByteDance formulated, directed, controlled, had the
authority to control, or participated in the acts and practices set forth in this Complaint.
YouTube Defendants
40. Defendant Alphabet Inc. is a Delaware corporation with its principal place of
business in Mountain View, California. Alphabet Inc. is the sole stockholder of XXVI Holdings
Inc.
41. Defendant XXVI Holdings Inc. is a Delaware corporation with its principal place
of business in Mountain View, California. XXVI Holdings, Inc. is a wholly owned subsidiary of
Alphabet Inc. and the managing member of Google LLC (“Google”).
42. Defendant Google LLC is a limited liability company organized under the laws of
the state of Delaware, and its principal place of business is in Mountain View, California. Google
LLC is a wholly owned subsidiary of XXVI Holdings Inc., and the managing member of YouTube,
LLC. Google LLC transacts or has transacted business in this District and throughout the United
9
States. At all times material to this Complaint, acting alone or in concert with others, Google LLC
has advertised, marketed, and distributed its YouTube video sharing platform to consumers
throughout the United States. At all times material to this Complaint, acting alone or in concert
with YouTube, LLC, Google LLC formulated, directed, controlled, had the authority to control,
or participated in the acts and practices set forth in this Complaint.
43. Defendant YouTube, LLC is a limited liability company organized under the laws
of the state of Delaware, and its principal place of business is in San Bruno, California. YouTube,
LLC is a wholly owned subsidiary of Google LLC. YouTube, LLC transacts or has transacted
business in this District and throughout the United States. At all times material to this Complaint,
acting alone or in concert with Defendant Google LLC, YouTube, LLC has advertised, marketed,
and distributed its YouTube social media platform to consumers throughout the United States. At
all times material to this Complaint, acting alone or in concert with Google LLC, YouTube, LLC
formulated, directed, controlled, had the authority to control, or participated in the acts and
practices set forth in this Complaint.
IV. FACTUAL BACKGROUND
44. Social media platforms have grown exponentially over the past decade, from
millions to billions of users, and are reaping billions of dollars in profit through advertising.
45. America’s youth are particularly prevalent users of social media and are,
accordingly, seen as Defendants’ most valuable commodities. This is borne out by minors’ access
to and use of social media, as 95% of teenagers aged 13-17 have cellphones11 and 90% use social
media.12 Studies also show that even younger children have widespread social media use.13
11
Emily Vogels et al., Teens, Social Media and Technology 2022, Pew Rsch. Ctr. (Aug. 10, 2022),
https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2022/08/10/teens-social-media-and-technology-2022/.
12
Social Media and Teens, supra note 4.
13
Sharing Too Soon? Children and Social Media Apps, C.S. Mott Child.’s Hosp. Univ. Mich. Health (Oct. 18, 2021),
https://mottpoll.org/sites/default/files/documents/101821_SocialMedia.pdf.
10
46. To obtain such a virulent spread across America’s youth, each platform utilizes
intentional design choices and operational methods to keep their audiences captive once on the
platform. Researchers studying the effect social media has on the brain have shown that social
media exploits “the same neural circuitry” as “gambling and recreational drugs to keep consumers
using their products as much as possible.”14
Meta’s Purposefully Manipulative and Addictive Social Media Platform

Design
47. Defendant Meta operates multiple social media platforms, including Facebook and
Instagram, which substantially contribute to the ongoing youth mental health crisis.
48. Meta’s platforms are designed to create dangerous experiences for users where they
are systematically exposed to tailored content that is designed to promote repetitive and addictive
use of their social media platforms. This experience is designed to promote maximum user
engagement with the platform regardless of the consequences this engagement has on the user’s
mental health and overall well-being, rendering Defendants’ social media platforms inherently
dangerous, particularly when used by teens and children.
49. Both the Facebook and Instagram platforms push a “feed” to users. But,
importantly, the “feed” does not consist only of material posted by accounts that the user has
chosen to follow. Rather, it also includes substantial volumes of material specifically selected and
promoted by Meta, as well as advertising. Meta’s algorithms and designs drive the experience the
user has, not the user’s choices.
50. In order to maximize user engagement, and thereby maximize its profits obtained
through advertising revenue made from showing ads to users, Meta promotes harmful and/or
14
Jena Hilliard et al., Social Media Addiction, Addiction Ctr (Apr. 3, 2023),
https://www.addictioncenter.com/drugs/social-media-addiction/#:~:text=Due%20to%20the%20effect%20that,when
%20taking%20an%20addictive%20substance.
11
unhealthy user experiences. Meta is aware of these inherently dangerous features and has
repeatedly decided against changing them and/or implementing readily available and relatively
inexpensive safety measures, for the stated purpose of ensuring continued growth, engagement,
and revenue increase. Meta’s own analysis recognizes simple solutions could be effective but
Meta has chosen not to implement known tools that could alleviate the harm caused by its social
media platforms.15
51. Moreover, Meta fails to take basic precautions that could protect the hundreds of
thousands of minors using its social media platforms. For instance, Meta allows individuals to
have multiple accounts, does not verify user’s age or identify, and does not confirm the authenticity
of email addresses. These failures exacerbate the harm Meta’s social media platforms cause by
making it impossible to avoid unwanted interactions. Users can open accounts as fast as those
accounts can be blocked and when coupled with the excessive and addictive usage habits Meta’s
social media platforms promote among teens, these features create a perfect storm for depression,
anxiety, and suicide and self-harm.
52. Additionally, Meta knows that underage users are on its platforms and has
deliberately designed its platforms to evade parental authority and consent, including but not
limited to Meta’s failure to verify age and identity, provision of multiple accounts, marketing
aimed at informing minors that they can open multiple accounts, failure to provide a point of contact
for parents to notify Meta of lack of consent, marketing aimed at children that encourages children
to use Meta’s social media platforms without consent, and multiple other features and conduct by
15
Teen Girls Body Image and Social Comparison on Instagram—An Exploratory Study in the U.S. at 40, WSJ (Sept.
29, 2021), https://s.wsj.net/public/resources/documents/teen-girls-body-image-and-social-comparison-on-
instagram.pdf.
12
Meta aimed at ensuring young users have a means to access Meta’s social media platforms no
matter the circumstances.
53. These practices, in addition to the harmful design choices Meta has made for its
platforms as detailed below, have caused serious harm to the children and teens in Plaintiff’s
community and attending Plaintiff’s public schools and have caused Plaintiff to expend substantial
resources to address the growing mental health challenges faced by the minors it serves.
1. Meta’s Facebook Platform
54. Facebook is an online social network that is part of the Meta Platforms.
55. Facebook is currently the largest social network in the world with approximately 2
billion daily users of as 2022.16
56. When it was founded in 2004, only students at certain colleges and universities
could use the social media platform—and verification of college enrollment was required to access
the platform.
57. In 2005, Facebook expanded and became accessible to students at twenty-one
universities in the United Kingdom and others around the world. Meta then launched a high school
version of Facebook, which Meta CEO and majority shareholder, Mark Zuckerberg, referred to as
the next logical step. Even then, however, high school networks required an invitation to join.
58. Facebook later expanded eligibility to employees of several companies, including
Apple Inc. and Microsoft. On December 11, 2005, Facebook added universities in Australia and
New Zealand to its network and, in September 2006, Facebook opened itself up to everyone. While
Facebook claimed that it was open only to persons aged 13 and older and with a valid email
address, on information and belief, Facebook made the decision to not actually require verification
16
Stacy Jo Dixon, Number of Daily Active Facebook Users Worldwide as of 4th Quarter 2022 (in Millions), Statista
(Feb. 13, 2023), https://www.statista.com/statistics/346167/facebookglobal-dau.
13
of age and/or identity and did not verify user email addresses so that underage users could literally
enter nonsense email addresses and would be provided by Meta with access to a Facebook account.
59. Meta’s history of starting as a closed platform limited to only specific users over
the age of 18, and then over the age of 13, demonstrates that Meta knows how to implement design
features meant to restrict access to persons above a certain age. Nonetheless, Meta made a deliberate
decision in 2006 to distribute its platform to everyone in the world with internet access, including
minors, without considering the consequences of this affirmative choice.
60. At the same time that Facebook was expanding its platform, it also implemented a
series of changes to its design meant to increase user engagement with the platform and promote
platform growth including: (1) launching the “like” button; (2) creating a direct messaging
services; (3) changing its newsfeed algorithm to determine what content to show users; and (4)
creating content for users to post on its platform.
61. These design changes, while profit maximizing for Facebook, had damaging
consequences for Facebook’s young users.
62. For example, Facebooks’ implementation of a feed and the “like” button increase
social comparison pressure and publicly visible social metrics, such as “likes,” turn social
interaction into a competition, in ways that are particularly harmful to adolescents. Moreover,
adolescents’ under-developed ability to self-regulate means they are particularly vulnerable to the
dopamine spikes caused by these external stimuli that activate the brain’s reward system.17 Meta
is well-aware of the harm of its “like” feature as indicated by the employees involved in creating
17
Nino Gugushvili et al., Facebook use intensity and depressive symptoms: a moderated mediation model of
problematic Facebook use, age, neuroticism, and extraversion at 3, BMC Psych. 10, 279 (2022),
https://doi.org/10.1186/s40359-022-00990-7.
14
the features’ public statements later decrying it and discussing its harms after leaving the
company.18
63. Additionally, Facebook’s messaging system is harmful to underage users as it
creates damaging and dangerous interactions for minors. In the direct messaging application,
which is integrated into Facebook, minors can encounter unwanted and harmful interactions such
as bullying and sexual exploitation. Additionally, through the message application, children are
vulnerable to unsupervised interactions with adults who may be predators or other bad actors.
64. Facebook has also designed and implemented harmful algorithms. For instance,
Facebook uses algorithmic data mining that is able to pair users with whatever experience will
maximize their engagement with its platform. Facebook directs users to the experiences that will
maximize their engagement even if it exposes children and teens to harmful and destructive
content. For instance, the algorithmic data may tailor a Facebook feed for a young girl with body
image issues to show pro- anorexia content or may tailor a feed for a child struggling with
depression to show pro-suicide content. Facebook has also designed and implemented a group
recommendation algorithm that directs all users, including minors, to harmful groups that they
would not have been exposed to but for Facebook’s programming choices.
65. Facebook also creates content, including images and GIFs, and licenses thousands
of hours of music, for users to use in videos they share on Facebook. These features are designed
to encourage minor users posting on Facebook and is meant to increase user’s engagement on
Facebook.
66. In addition to these harmful in app features, Facebook uses push notifications and
emails which create addictive behavior. These features make individuals compelled to return to
18
See, e.g., Paul Lewis, ‘Our minds can be hijacked’: the tech insiders who fear a smartphone dystopia, The Guardian
(Oct. 6, 2017), https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/oct/05/smartphone-addiction-silicon-valley-dystopia.
15
Facebook’s platform. Moreover, Facebook sends these notifications regardless of the time of day
which means minors receive these notifications even at night when they should be sleeping or
when they are in school.
67. Facebook’s privacy settings and default profile settings are also harmful to minors.
An individual’s Facebook profile may be public or private. On a public profile, any Facebook user
can view the photos, videos, and other content posted by the user with a public profile, whereas, on
a private profile, the user’s content may only be viewed by the user’s followers, which the user
must approve. Critically, Facebook chose to make user profiles public by default for many years.
This allowed all users to see and interact with underage users with public profiles by default. Even
now, while Facebook claims that it is defaulting certain categories of users into private platforms,
it does not limit who may change their setting to public. Once a user changes their settings to
public, Facebook again allows all users to message and interact with any user, even if the user is a
minor.
68. Permitting underage users to have public profiles exposes these young users to a
wide swath of other users on the Facebook platform. Disastrously for children and teens, many of
these potential connections are harmful.
69. Ultimately, the totality of the Facebook experience, created by the feature and
design choices made by Facebook, leads to addictive, compulsive, and excessive use by minors
and Facebook knows that youths are particularly vulnerable to these outcomes.
70. Despite knowing about these outcomes, Facebook has chosen to continue to
implement these addictive design features because they are good for Facebook’s business
advancement.
16
71. Indeed, these design choices were deliberately made to maximize user engagement.
As Sean Parker, Meta’s first President, explained in a 2017 interview:
The thought process that went into building these applications, Facebook
being the first of them, to really understand it was all about: “How do we
consume as much of your time and conscious attention as possible?” And
that means that we need to sort of give you a little dopamine hit every once
in a while, because someone liked or commented on a photo or a post or
whatever. And that's going to get you to contribute more content, and that’s
going to get you, you know, more likes and comments. It’s a social-
validation feedback loop that that it’s exactly the kind of thing that a hacker
like myself would come up with, because you’re exploiting a vulnerability
in human psychology. The inventors, creators — it’s me, it’s Mark
[Zuckerberg], it’s Kevin Systrom on Instagram, it’s all of these people —
understood this consciously. And we did it anyway.
72. “God only knows what it’s doing to our children’s brains,” Mr. Parker also
remarked in the same interview.
73. Similarly, in testimony before Congress in September 2020, Tim Kendall,
Facebook’s first director of monetization, reaffirmed that Meta had chosen to design its platforms
in ways it knew to be dangerous in order to maximize engagement. Mr. Kendall explained:
We sought to mine as much human attention as possible and turn it into

historically unprecedented profits. To do this, we didn’t simply create
something useful and fun; we took a page from Big Tobacco’s playbook,
working to make our offering addictive at the outset….
The next page in Big Tobacco’s playbook was to add bronchodilators to

cigarettes. This allowed the smoke to get in contact with more surface area
of the lungs. Allowing for misinformation, conspiracy theories, and fake
news to flourish were Facebook’s bronchodilators.
But that incendiary content wasn’t enough. Tobacco companies then added
ammonia to cigarettes to increase the speed with which nicotine traveled to
the brain. Facebook’s ability to deliver this incendiary content to the right
person, at the right time, in the exact right way—through their algorithms—
that is their ammonia. And we now know it fosters tribalism and division.
Social media preys on the most primal parts of your brain, it provokes, it
shocks, and it enrages. . . .
Facebook and their cohorts worship at the altar of engagement and cast
17
other concerns aside, raising the voices of division, anger, hate, and
misinformation to drown out the voices of truth, justice, morality, and
peace.19
74. Mr. Parker and Mr. Kendall’s confessions stand in stark contrast with Meta’s public
statements about the safety of its platforms made at the time it was expanding the reach of its
platform and the design elements meant to prolong interaction. Throughout its changes, re-designs,
and launches, Facebook founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, made public statements promising
the public that safety was Meta’s top priority. For example, in February of 2017, Mr. Zuckerberg
posted on his personal Facebook page a statement titled “Building Global Community,” in which
he talked at length about how Meta is focused on safety, how it intends to use its artificial
intelligence to the fullest to keep users safe, and how amazing Facebook is for bringing
communities together, promoting critically important social groups, and other statements that were
untrue and profoundly dangerous, given what was actually happening at Facebook and what Mr.
Zuckerberg knew about the harms his platforms were causing American youth including those in
Plaintiff’s community and schools.
75. In fact, despite these public facing reassurances of Facebook’s safety, in 2017, Meta
employees were internally reporting to management that Facebook was causing harmful
dependencies. Worse, despite these known harmful dependencies, Meta was also already
marketing to children under 13, despite clear legal mandates that it could not allow children under
13 on its platform. And Meta leadership, including Mr. Zuckerberg himself, actively rejected
proposed re-designs intended to minimize the harms to child and teen users, like the youth in
Plaintiff’s community and schools.
19
Testimony of Tim Kendall, House Committee on Energy & Commerce (Sept. 24, 2020),
https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/sites/default/files/documents/023.pdf
18
76. Faced with these undeniably harmful consequences of its design choices, internally,
Meta employees have offered countless suggestions and recommendations as to design changes
Meta could make to protect its users from the harms Meta causes. Yet, over and over again, Meta
leadership has declined, delayed, or outright ignored the vast majority of those in favor of its own
financial and growth-related interests.
77. The reason for Meta’s resistance to changing the harmful nature of Facebook’s
platform is simple: it directly profits from the time, attention, and data its young users provide it
and from the content it encourages young users to post to Facebook.
78. Tellingly, Meta has conducted studies relating to social comparison harms on its
platforms titled: “Social Comparison: Topics, Celebrities, Like Counts, Selfies” and “Appearance-
Based Social Comparison on Instagram.” These studies have shown that the toxic stew of design
features Meta purposely embedded in its platforms cause intense mental harms to young people.
Yet Meta has continued to systemically implement and continue to use these harmful design
features.
79. While Meta knows that it is harming its young users, leadership has decided to
prioritize ever increasing profits over the health and well-being of its minor users.
80. This fact was detailed by the testimony of Facebook employee France Haugen
before Congress. Ms. Haugen testified: “The company’s leadership knows ways to make Facebook
and Instagram safer and won’t make the necessary changes because they have put their immense
profits before people.”20 Haugen continued, “[Facebook’s] profit optimizing machine is generating
self-harm and self-hate—especially for vulnerable groups, like teenage girls. These problems have
20
Frances Haugen, Statement before United States Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation,
Sub-Committee on Consumer Protection, Product Safety, and Data Security (Oct. 4, 2021),
https://www.commerce.senate.gov/services/files/FC8A558E-824E-4914-BEDB-3A7B1190BD49.
19
been confirmed repeatedly by Facebook’s own internal research.”21 As emphasized by Haugen,
“Facebook became a $1 trillion company by paying for its profits with our safety, including the
safety of our children.”22 Haugen’s explosive testimony and documentary evidence have
unfortunately not changed this conduct.
81. Because Meta continues to prioritize its own bottom line over mental health,
thousands of American children and teens, including those in Plaintiff’s community and schools,
continue to use Facebook daily and suffer exposure to its harmful user experience.
2. Meta’s Instagram Platform
82. Instagram is a social media platform that was launched in October 2010 to feature
photos taken on mobile devices. Instagram was acquired by Facebook for $1 billion in April 2012.
83. After Facebook acquired Instagram, it underwent tremendous growth driven by
Facebook’s implementation of design and developmental changes meant to increase user engagement.
These changes to the design and development of Instagram were undertaken without regard to their
impact on children and teen users of the social media platform.
84. Many of the design features implemented on Instagram are the same ones made on
Facebook. These include: (1) a “like” button; (2) direct messaging; (3) an algorithm designed to
determine what content to show users; and (4) creating content for users to post on its platform.
As described above, these features are meant to encourage compulsive and addictive use of the
social media platform leading to negative outcomes for child and teen users.
85. The “like” button feature on Instagram, direct messaging feature, and content creation
features on Instagram all work like the same features on Facebook and have the same corresponding harms
for adolescent users as described above. Similarly, like Facebook, Instagram permits minors to have public
21
Id.
22
Id. (emphasis in original).
20
accounts which, for the reasons discussed above, poses known harms to the children and teen users of
Instagram.
86. The push notification in Instagram also causes the same harms as the Facebook push
notification features, while also imposing additional harms through its uniquely problematic design. In the
case of Instagram, Defendant Meta collects individualized data—not just about the user, but also
about the user’s friends and contacts—and then crafts notifications, decides notification frequency,
and notifies users via text and email using this data. Meta’s notifications to individual Instagram
users are specifically designed to, and do, prompt them to open Instagram and view what Instagram
selected, increasing sessions, and resulting in greater profits to Instagram irrespective of user’s
health or wellbeing.
87. As recent leaks of internal documents show, Instagram’s feed algorithm also poses a unique
harm to Instagram’s teen users, of which Instagram is well aware. Meta exerts control over a user’s
Instagram “feed,” including through certain ranking mechanisms, escalation loops, and/or
promotion of advertising and posts specifically selected and promoted by Meta based on, among
other things, its ongoing planning, assessment, and prioritization of the types of information most
likely to increase engagement. In the case of certain user groups, like teens, this control translates
to Meta’s deliberate and repeated promotion of harmful and unhealthy online experiences, which
Meta knows is causing harm to minor users.
88. Instagram also has a search feature called “Explore,” where a user is shown an
endless feed selected by an algorithm designed by Meta based upon the users’ demographics and
prior activity in the application. The feed is not based on the user’s searches or requests. Instead,
Meta crafts the feed via its algorithms (which Meta in turn programs to increase engagement and
in other ways Meta knows to be harmful to users, but more profitable to Meta), as well as paid
21
advertisements created with Meta’s assistance or approval, and the like. Indeed, Meta’s internal
analyses indicate that the “Explore” feature is amongst the most damaging features for teens:
See Teen Girls Body Image and Social Comparison on Instagram—An Exploratory Study in the
U.S., supra note 12, at 31.
89. These leaked reports from Meta also show that it is aware that Instagram is causing
serious mental health problems for its teen users and has even categorized the various harms this
social media platform inflicts on its teen users.23
23
Teen Mental Health Deep Dive, Instagram, https://s.wsj.net/public/resources/documents/teen-mental-health-deep-
dive.pdf.
22
23
See supra, “Teen Mental Health Deep Dive,” pp. 18, 27, 32 (examples only).
90. The Instagram platform also has features known as “Reels” and “Stories,” which
promote the use of short videos and temporary posts, respectively. These features were developed
to appeal to teens and Meta knows that the features coalesce into a toxic environment that is
addictive and harmful:
24
See Teen Girls Body Image and Social Comparison on Instagram, supra note 12, at 33-34.
91. Yet, despite its knowledge of these harmful consequences of Instagram’s
algorithms, Meta refused to implement changes that could protect the mental health of its young
users, instead, once again, prioritizing profits over the well-being of its children and teen users.
Indeed, during Meta’s 2022 Third Quarter Earnings Conference call, Mark Zuckerberg touted that
increasing time spent on the Company’s platforms is one of the metrics it follows, noting that reels
25
are “‘incremental’ for users spending time on Instagram” and that “‘[t]he trends look good here,
and we believe that we’re gaining time spent share on competitors like TikTok.’”24
92. Meta consciously disregards any duty to protect minors in Plaintiff’s community
and schools.
YouTube’s Purposefully Manipulative and Addictive Design
93. YouTube is the second-most visited website on the internet. Astoundingly, surveys
by the Pew Research Center in 2022 found that 95% of American teenagers used YouTube and
that one in five American teenagers reported that they used YouTube almost constantly.25
94. YouTube earns the bulk of its revenue through advertisements. In order to
maximize the profits earned through these revenues, YouTube has a design that allows it to embed
targeted advertising directly into the video clips that its users watch, as well as promote featured
content.26
95. Individuals can create channels on YouTube where they post content they create.
When these channel owners cross a certain viewership threshold they can elect to monetize the
channel by delivering advertisements to viewers. The revenue earned from advertisements on these
channels is shared between the channel owner and YouTube. YouTube also offers systems,
policies, and features to encourage creators to post more and earn rewards that can be converted
into cash.
96. YouTube has two types of advertising that its channel owners can use. The first is
contextual advertising which is informed by the particular channel or video. The second is
24
Kate Duffy, Mark Zuckerberg says Instagram Reels are booming despite celebrities such as Kim Kardashian and
Kylie Jenner slamming the app for being like TikTok, Yahoo! Finance (Oct. 27, 2022),
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/mark-zuckerberg-says-instagram-reels-121319465.html.
25
Emily Vogels et al., supra note 11.
26
Andrew Beattie, How YouTube Makes Money Off Videos, Investopedia (Oct. 31, 2021),
https://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/053015/how-youtube-makes-money-videos.asp.
26
behavioral advertising which is informed by the behavior of the device owner as tracked across
different websites, apps, and devices. YouTube defaults to behavioral advertising and, while it
technically permits channel owners to turn off default behavioral advertising and serve instead
contextual advertising that does not track viewers, almost no channel owners make this choice.
This is likely because channel owners receive warnings that disabling behavioral advertising can
significantly reduce their channel’s revenue.
97. YouTube’s advertising strategy is effective, as demonstrated by the fact that it
generated total advertising revenues of $28.8 billion and $29.2 billion in fiscal years 2021 and
2022 respectively.
98. In order to maximize its advertising profits, YouTube has designed and
implemented algorithms meant to create compulsive, addictive use of it platform by minors and
pushes users into dangerous “rabbit hole” experiences.
99. While YouTube has refused to publicly disclose its algorithms, its VP of
Engineering has described the algorithm it uses in broad terms as follows:
To provide such custom curation, our recommendation system doesn’t

operate off of a ‘recipe book’ of what to do. It’s constantly evolving,
learning every day from over 80 billion pieces of information we call
signals. That’s why providing more transparency isn’t as simple as listing
a formula for recommendations, but involves understanding all the data that
feeds into our system. A number of signals build on each other to help
inform our system about what you find satisfying: clicks, watchtime, survey
responses, sharing, likes, and dislikes. 27
100. Whatever the particulars of YouTube’s algorithms, it is well aware of the fact that
the algorithms on its platform promote and amplify violent and harmful experiences.
27
Cristos Goodrow, On YouTube’s recommendation system, Inside YouTube (Sept. 15, 2021), https://blog.youtube/
inside-youtube/on-youtubes-recommendation-system/.
27
101. Internally, YouTube employees have notified leadership of these issues in the
YouTube algorithm and, each time such notice i s provided, they are told by YouTube
leadership, “Don’t rock the boat.”28 According to individuals within YouTube
The company spent years chasing one business goal above others:
‘Engagement,’ a measure of the views, time spent and interactions with
online videos. Conversations with over twenty people who work at, or
recently left, YouTube reveal a corporate leadership unable or unwilling to
act on these internal alarms for fear of throttling engagement.
Id.
102. Because YouTube concluded in 2012 that the more people watched the more ads it
could sell, it set a company-wide goal to reach one billion hours of viewing a day, and rewrote its
recommendation engine to maximize for that goal. Id. In order to achieve this goal, YouTube re-
designed itself to maximize addiction and stayed the course on programming its algorithm to
prioritize engagement over user safety, despite its knowledge that such programming was harming
a significant number of its users – including children and teens.
103. Moreover, YouTube’s algorithm-based experience is fundamental to its functionality.
Indeed, “YouTube has described its recommendation system as artificial intelligence that is
constantly learning which suggestions will keep users watching. These recommendations, it says,
drive 70 percent of views, but the company does not reveal details of how the system makes its
choices.”29
28
Mark Bergen, YouTube Executives Ignored Warnings, Letting Toxic Videos Run Rampant, Bloomberg (Apr. 2, 2019,
5:00 am), https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-04-02/youtube-executives-ignored- warnings-letting-
toxic-videos-run-rampant.
29
Max Fisher & Amanda Taub, On YouTube’s Digital Playground, an Open Gate for Pedophiles, N.Y. Times (June
3, 2019), https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/03/world/americas/youtube-pedophiles.html.
28
104. YouTube’s algorithm drives users towards the content they should watch next, thus users
experience on the platform is driven by the algorithm and not user’s choices. Accordingly, YouTube drives
young users towards content they would not have been exposed to but for YouTube’s design choices.
105. YouTube knows that underage users are on its YouTube platform and has
deliberately designed its platform in a manner intended to evade parental authority and consent.
106. YouTube is used by many millions of minors every day, including students in
Plaintiff’s community and schools, who have become addicted to it and suffer other severe mental
harms as a result of how YouTube has designed, setup, and operates its platform design and
features.
107. YouTube consciously disregards any duty to protect minors in Plaintiff’s
community and schools.
Snapchat’s Purposefully Manipulative and Addictive Design
108. Snapchat was founded in 2011 and quickly became an incredibly popular social
media app among U.S. teens with 59% of children between the ages of 13-17 reporting using it.30
109. Snapchat started as a photo and short video sharing social media application that
allows users to form groups and share posts or “Snaps” that disappear after being viewed by the
recipients—and became well known for this self-destructing message feature. Specifically,
Snapchat allows users to form groups and share posts, or “Snaps,” that disappear after being
viewed by the recipients. However, Snapchat quickly evolved from there, as its leadership made
design changes and rapidly developed new features that were intended to, and that did increase,
Snapchat’s popularity among teen users.
30
29
110. Among the features added by Snapchat were video capabilities, stories, and chat
features. These features evolved and also grew to include various propriety features including “Our
Story,” Geofilters and Community Geofilters, and Snapcash.
111. Snapchat monetized its user base by generating money through advertisements to
its users.
112. Snapchat estimates that it has tens of millions of teen users. Against this backdrop,
Snapchat has numerous algorithmic features that promote dangerous use of its platform by
teenagers.
113. One of these features is “Quick Add” which sends messages to users suggesting
they should “friend” another user on Snapchat. These Snap-initiated messages result in exposure
to harmful contacts, bullying, and dangerous predators and are designed to reinforce addiction and
increase the odds of maintaining more users for longer.
114. Snapchat also generates an “Explore” feed that pushes out a never ending stream
of video. These features are designed by Snap to grab and keep users’ attention for as long as
possible each day, and have led many people, from psychologists to government officials, to
describe Snapchat as “dangerously addictive.”
115. Snapchat also offers several unique messaging and data features. It is perhaps most
famous for its self-destructing message design feature, which appeals to minors and makes it more
difficult for parents to monitor their children’s social media activity. This is an inherently
dangerous feature because it both encourages and allows minor uses to exchange harmful, illegal,
and sexually explicit images with adults, and provides those same adults with an efficient vehicle
to recruit victims. Snapchat is a go-to application for sexual predators because of this feature.
30
116. For years Snapchat has received reports of child abuse and bullying occurring
through its platform and because of its features.31 Despite these alarming reports, Snapchat
continues to use and promote these features so that it does not decrease the popularity of platform.
117. The disappearing photo feature is also dangerous because it does not actually work
as advertised. Indeed, while teens rely on Snap’s representations when taking and sending photos
that they will disappear, recipients are actually able to save photos – and then often use the photos
a teen took under the assumption that it would be automatically deleted to bully, exploit, and/or
sexually abuse the teen who took the photo.
118. In 2014, Snapchat added “Stories” and “Chat” features that allowed users to post
longer stories that could be viewed by users outside the user’s friends. On information and belief,
during the relevant time period, Snapchat’s algorithmically ranking of Stories made sure that
Stories from accounts that a user interacted with the most appeared at the top of the user’s Stories.
119. Snapchat also allows users to enable the sharing of their location, through a tool
called Snap Map, which allows the users’ followers (and the public for Snaps submitted by the
users) to see the user’s location on a map. At all times relevant, this feature was available to all
users, including minors. This is an inherently dangerous feature, which serves no practical purpose
– but that does provide strangers and predators with access to the location of minor victims. This
feature has directly contributed to stalking and other, physical harms and assaults perpetrated on
minors, and these are harms known to Snapchat.
120. Snap also has a “My Eyes Only” functionality that encourages and enables minor
users to hide harmful material from parents by allowing them to hide material in a special tab that
31
Zak Doffman, Snapchat Has Become A ‘Haven for Child Abuse’ with its ‘Self-Destructing Messages’, Forbes (May
26, 2019, 5:13 am), https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2019/05/26/snapchats-self-destructing-messages-
have-created-a-haven-for-child-abuse/.
31
requires a passcode, and where material cannot be recovered – even by Snapchat itself – without
the correct passcode. The material self-destructs if a user attempts to access the hidden folder with
the wrong code. My Eyes Only allows Snapchats’ young users to hide potentially harmful material
from parents and/or legal owners of the devices used to access Snap.
121. On information and belief, Snapchat’s disappearing messages are harmful for this
reason as well. Snapchat has possession, custody, or control of that data, and knows that it will be
relevant and material in the event of litigation, but has designed its technologies – i.e., its advertised
“disappearing” functionality which suggests that Snap itself no longer has access to such data – in
a manner that frustrates and actively prevents parents from monitoring the activity of their
underage children on Snapchat. These are serious harmful features, which Snapchat should be
required to remedy immediately.
122. Like Meta and TikTok, Snapchat also sends push notifications and emails to
encourage addictive behavior and to increase use of Snapchat. Snapchat’s communications are
triggered and based upon information Snapchat collects from and about its users, and Snapchat
“pushes” these communications to teen users in excessive numbers and disruptive times of day.
These notifications are specifically designed to, and do, prompt them to open Snapchat, increasing
sessions, and resulting in greater profits to Snapchat. Even the format of these notifications has
been designed to pull users back on to the social media platform—irrespective of a user’s health
or wellbeing.
123. Snapchat also features a series of rewards including trophies, streaks, and other
signals of social recognition similar to the “likes” metrics available across other platforms. These
features are designed to encourage users to share their videos and posts with the public. Moreover,
they are designed to be addictive, and to encourage greater use of Snapchat without regard to any
32
other content or third-party communication. While the names of these various metrics have
changed over time, and certain metrics have been phased out and others phased in, their core
collective function—rewarding harmful over engagement with Snapchat—has never changed.
124. These features serve no purpose other than creating dependencies on Snapchat by
children and teens, which dependencies in turn cause sleep deprivation, anxiety, depression, anger,
shame, interpersonal conflicts, and other serious harms to mental and physical health.
125. Snapchat incorporates several other features that serve no functionality purpose, but
that do make Snapchat more appealing to children and teens (i.e., avatars, emojis, and games) while
simultaneously using known mechanisms to addict those same children and teens (i.e., streaks and
trophies offering unknown rewards). These features and the ones discussed above were particularly
addictive to youths and were targeted to underage users.
126. The Snap Streak feature is unique to Snapchat and is one of the most – if not the
most – addictive feature available especially to teenagers. Snap Streaks provide a measure of a
user’s interaction with another user, in the form of a symbol representing the user’s consistent
engagement with the other user’s posts after a certain amount of time. If the user fails to engage
with future messages from that user fast enough, Snap removes this symbol from both users’
profiles. Because of Snapchat’s successful efforts to integrate itself into the lives of American
children, this creates social pressure to engage with Snapchat—or risk the humiliation of losing
Snap Streaks. Snapchat has known for years that Snap Streak is addictive and generates
compulsive use of the app in minors, yet it continues to provide and promote that feature to teens and
children.
127. Snapchat has also developed images for users to decorate the pictures or videos
they post, and Snapchat has developed Lenses, which are augmented reality-based special effects
33
and sounds for users to apply to pictures and videos users post on Snapchat, and World Lenses to
augment the environment around posts. Snapchat also has acquired publication rights to music,
audio, and video content that its minor users can incorporate in the pictures and videos they post
on Snapchat.
128. These images, Lenses, and licensed audio and video content supplied and created
by Snapchat frequently make a material contribution to the creation or development of the minor
user’s Snapchat posts. Indeed, in many cases, the only content in a user’s Snapchat post are images,
Lenses, and licensed audio and video content.
129. Snap consciously disregards any duty to protect minors in Plaintiff’s community
and schools.
TikTok’s Purposefully Manipulative and Addictive Design
130. TikTok was launched in or around 2017 for iOS and Android in most markets
outside of mainland China and became available worldwide after merging with another Chinese
social media service, Musical.ly, on August 2, 2018.
131. TikTok is a video sharing social media application where users create, share, and
view short video clips. TikTok hosts a variety of short-form user videos, from genres like pranks,
stunts, tricks, jokes, dance, and entertainment with durations from fifteen seconds to ten minutes.
132. Users on TikTok who open the TikTok application are automatically shown an
endless stream of videos selected by an algorithm developed by TikTok to shape the user
experience on the “For You” page based upon the user’s demographics, likes, and prior activity
on the app.
133. TikTok, just like the other Defendants, has designed its algorithms to addict users
and cause them to spend as much time on the application as possible, including through advanced
analytics that create a variable reward system tailored to user’s viewing habits and interests.
34
134. A leaked internal TikTok document titled “TikTok Algo 101”32 was created by
TikTok’s engineering team in Beijing and offers details about both the app’s mathematical core
and insight into the company’s understanding of human nature. The document explains that in the
pursuit of the company’s “ultimate goal” of adding daily active users, it has chosen to optimize for
two closely related metrics in the stream of videos it serves: “retention”— that is, whether a user
comes back— and “time spent.” The document offers a rough equation for how videos are scored,
in which a prediction driven by machine learning and actual user behavior are summed up for each
of three bits of data: likes, comments and playtime, as well as an indication that the video has
been played.
135. Moreover an article by the New York Times, explained how TikTok markets itself
as an “artificial intelligence company.” “The most obvious clue is right there when you open the
app: the first thing you see isn’t a feed of your friends, but a page called ‘For You.’ It’s an
algorithmic feed based on videos you’ve interacted with, or even just watched. It never runs out of
material. It is not, unless you train it to be, full of people you know, or things you’ve explicitly told
it you want to see. It’s full of things that you seem to have demonstrated you want to watch, no matter
what you actually say you want to watch. Imagine a version of Facebook that was able to fill your
feed before you’d friended a single person. That’s TikTok.”33 Another article by the New York
Times confirms, “The FYP algorithm is TikTok’s secret sauce, and a big part of what makes it so
accurate is ByteDance’s global reach. Every swipe, tap and video viewed by TikTok users around
32
Ben Smith, How TikTok Reads Your Mind, N.Y. Times (Dec. 5, 2021), https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/05/
business/media/tiktok-algorithm.html.
33
John Herrman, How TikTok is Rewriting the World, N.Y. Times (Mar. 10, 2019),
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/10/style/what-is-tik-tok.html.
35
the world—billions and billions of data points a day—is fed into giant databases, which are then
used to train artificial intelligence to predict which videos will keep users’ attention.”34
136. TikTok also features and promotes various “challenges” where users film
themselves engaging in behavior that mimics and “one ups” other users posting videos related to
a particular challenge. TikTok promotes users creating and posting videos of challenges identified
by a system of hashtags that are promoted within TikTok’s search feature.
137. TikTok’s app and algorithm have created an environment in which TikTok
“challenges” are widely promoted and result in maximum user engagement and participation, thus
financially benefiting TikTok. At the same time, TikTok “challenges” involve users filming
themselves engaging in behavior that is routinely dangerous or risky.
138. TikTok’s algorithm presents these often-dangerous “challenges” to users on their
FYP and encourages users to create, share, and participate in the “challenge.”
139. These are just some examples of how TikTok operates to generate profit, at the
expense of the health and well-being of its users, particularly its child and teen users.
140. Until mid-2021, TikTok also and by default made all users profiles “public,”
meaning that strangers, often adults, could view and message underage users of the TikTok app.
This also meant that those strangers could then contact children directly.
141. Like Meta and Snapchat, TikTok also sends push notifications and emails to
encourage addictive behavior in minors and to increase minor use of TikTok. TikTok’s
communications are triggered and based upon information TikTok collects from and about its
users, and TikTok “pushes” these communications to teen users in excessive numbers and at
disruptive times of day. These notifications are specifically designed to, and do, prompt them to
34
Kevin Roose, Is TikTok a Good Buy? It Depends on What’s Included, N.Y. Times (Aug. 5, 2020),
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/05/technology/tiktok-deal-algorithm.html.
36
open TikTok, increasing sessions, and resulting in greater profits to TikTok. Even the format of
these notifications has been designed to pull users back on to the social media platform—
irrespective of a user’s health or wellbeing.
142. Despite this, TikTok markets itself as a family-friendly social media application,
and markets to children and teens.
143. TikTok exclusively controls and operates the TikTok platform for profit, which like
Instagram and Snapchat, creates advertising revenue through maximizing the amount of time users
spend on their platforms. Accordingly, while TikTok purports to have a minimum age requirement
of 13-years-old, it does little to verify user age or enforce its age limitations despite knowledge
that underage use is widespread.
144. TikTok does not seek parental consent for underage users or provide warnings or
adequate controls that would allow parents to monitor and limit the use of TikTok by their children.
TikTok does not verify user age, enabling and encouraging teens and children to open TikTok
accounts, providing any age they want, without parental knowledge or consent.
145. Further, based on TikTok data leaked to the New York Times, internal TikTok
documents show that the number of daily U.S. users in July of 2020 estimated by TikTok to be 14
or younger—a whopping 18 million—was almost as large as the number of over-14 users, which is
around 20 million. The rest of TikTok’s U.S. users were classified as being “of unknown age.”35
146. On information and belief, a substantial percentage of TikTok’s U.S. users are age
13 or younger.
147. Like the other Defendants, TikTok has tried to boost engagement and keep young
users hooked to its social media platform by any means necessary.
35
Raymond Zhong, Sheera Frankel, A Third of TikTok’s U.S. Users May Be 14 or Under, Raising Safety Questions,
N.Y. Times (Aug 14. 2020), https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/14/technology/tiktok-underage-users-ftc.html.
37
148. TikTok has also developed memes and other images for users to apply to images and
videos they post on TikTok. TikTok also has acquired publication rights to music that its users can
incorporate in the pictures and videos they post on TikTok. TikTok knows that it is harming teens
yet consistently opts for prioritization of profit over health and well-being of its youth and teen
users— the millions of youth and teen users who continue to use its inherently dangerous and
harmful social media platform every single day.
149. Indeed, as evidenced by ByteDance’s Chinese version of TikTok (Douyin),
protections are available.36
150. TikTok consciously disregards any duty to protect minors in Plaintiff’s community
and schools.
V. DEFENDANTS’ BUSINESS MODELS MAXIMIZE USER SCREEN TIME,

FUELING ADDICTION
151. Defendants all have the same goal: to fuel addition by maximizing user screen time,
including usage by minors, in order to drive advertising revenues. Defendants receive revenue
from advertisers who pay a premium to target advertisements to exploit specific user behavior and
demographic groups, including youth—one of the most profitable target audiences.
152. While Defendants advertise their platforms as “free” because they do not charge their
users, they generate massive revenues by finding unique and increasingly dangerous ways to capture
user attention and target advertisements to their minor users. In fact, Defendants’ revenue is
directly linked to the level of user engagement and the amount of time users spend on their
platforms, which directly correlates with the number of advertisements that can be shown to each
36
China: Children given daily time limit on Douyin – its version of TikTok, BBC (Sept. 20, 2021),
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-58625934.
38
minor user. For example, Defendants use changing rewards that are designed to prompt minor
users to engage with their social media platforms in excessive and dangerous ways.
153. Defendants know, or in the exercise of ordinary care should know, that their designs
have created extreme and addictive usage by their minor users, and Defendants knowingly or
purposefully designed their platforms to encourage such addictive behaviors. For example, all the
achievements and trophies in Snapchat are unknown to users until they are unlocked. The
Company has stated that “[y]ou don’t even know about the achievement until you unlock it.” This
design is akin to a slot machine but marketed toward minor users who are even more susceptible
than gambling addicts to the variable reward and reminder system designed by Snapchat. The
system is designed to reward increasingly extreme behavior and usage by minors.
154. Similarly, Facebook and Instagram, like Snapchat and TikTok, are designed around
a series of features that seek to exploit minor users’ susceptibility to persuasive design and
unlimited accumulation of unpredictable and uncertain rewards, including “likes” and “followers.”
This design is unreasonably dangerous to the mental well-being of minors’ developing minds, and
has resulted in mental health disorders in youths in local communities, like the City of Providence,
and schools.
155. Defendants have reportedly employed thousands of psychologists and engineers to
help make their platforms maximally addictive. For example, Instagram’s “pull-to-refresh” is based
on how slot machines operate. It creates an endless feed experience, designed to manipulate brain
chemistry and prevent natural end points that would otherwise encourage minor users to move on
to other activities.37
37
Daniel Kruger, Ph.D., M.S., Social Media Copies Gambling Method ‘to create psychological cravings’, University
of Michigan Institute for Healthcare Policy & Innovation (May 8, 2018), https://ihpi.umich.edu/news/social-media-
copies-gambling-methods-create-psychological-cravings.
39
156. Rather than warning users or parents of the addictive design of their social media
platforms, Defendants actively conceal the dangerous and addictive nature of their platforms,
lulling minor users and parents into a false sense of security. This includes consistently playing
down their platforms’ negative effects on children in public statements and advertising, making
false or materially misleading statements concerning safety, and refusing to make their research
public or available to academics and lawmakers who request it.
157. Defendants have repeatedly represented to the public and the government that their
platforms are safe and not addictive.
158. For example, YouTube represents that it enforces its “Community Guidelines using
a combination of human reviewers and machine learning,” and that its policies “aim to make
YouTube a safer community ….” TikTok represents in its community guidelines that its priority is
“safety, diversity, inclusion, and authenticity,” and Snap’s Terms of Service claim, “We try hard
to keep our Services a safe place for all users.”
159. Defendants know that their platforms are designed to be, and are, addictive, and
that millions of minor users are addicted and/or engaging in excessive and risky use, leading to
mental health issues. Defendants also know, or in the exercise of reasonable care should know,
that their social media platforms are unreasonably dangerous to the mental well-being of minor
users’ developing minds.
160. Yet Defendants continue to engineer their platforms to keep users, and particularly
minors, engaged longer and more frequently. This “engineered addiction” includes features like
bottomless scrolling, tagging, notifications, and live stories.
161. Defendants also exploit minor users’ susceptibility to persuasive design and
unlimited accumulation of unpredictable and uncertain rewards (like “likes,” “followers,” “views,”
40
“streaks,” and “trophies”). As recently detailed by the FTC, these design features are
manipulative, dark patterns that deceive minor users into staying on the application and steer
excessive usage of social media platforms.38
162. Defendants purposefully engineer addiction by minors to exploit this advertising
demographic and reap significant profits in advertising revenue.
VI. DEFENDANTS HAVE CHOSEN DESIGNS THAT ADDICT MINORS TO THEIR

PLATFORMS
163. Defendants have intentionally designed their social media platforms to maximize
minors’ screen time, using complex algorithms and other features designed to exploit human
psychology and driven by the most advanced computer algorithms and artificial intelligence
available.
164. In particular, Defendants willfully, recklessly, and intentionally designed their
social media platforms to exploit minors in order to extend and expand their users’ engagement
with their products. Defendants target youth to exploit the still-developing brains of children
through the use of artificial intelligence, machine learning, and complicated algorithms to promote
extreme utilization. Defendants calibrate and optimize these addiction methods on a continual
basis with one goal: to maximize revenues.
165. Defendants designed and have progressively modified their platforms to promote
problematic and excessive use that they know is indicative of addictive and self-destructive use by
minors. For example, Defendants use information “feeds” that deliver personalized content,
including photos, videos, and other promoted subject matter to promote maximum engagement by
their minor users on an endless cycle.
38
FTC Staff Report, Bringing Dark Patterns to Light, FTC Bureau of Consumer Protection (Sept. 2022),
https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/ftc_gov/pdf/P214800%20Dark%20Patterns%20Report%209.14.2022%20-
%20FINAL.pdf.
41
166. YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok all use complex algorithms to optimize
user interaction through these never-ending “feeds.” The endless cycle has been described by
psychologists as a “flow state” that distorts a user’s ability to perceive time.39 Former Google design
ethicist Tristan Harris has described this endless cycle as being intentionally designed to eliminate any
reason to pause or discontinue using the platform by replacing the traditional close-ended experience of
consuming media with an infinite one.40
167. Defendants know that algorithm-controlled feeds promote unlimited “scrolling”—
a type of use that studies have identified as detrimental to users’ mental health. Defendants promote
this use because it allows them to display more advertisements and obtain more revenue from each
minor user.
168. Meta, YouTube, and TikTok’s algorithm-controlled features are designed to ensure
experiences most likely to increase user engagement, which often means experiences that
Defendants know to be harmful to their minor users. This includes experiences that minors would
otherwise never have but for Defendant’s sorting, prioritizing, and/or affirmative pushing of such
experiences to minors’ accounts.
169. In the words of one, high-level departing Meta employee,
39
Gino Gugushvili et al., Facebook use intensity and depressive symptoms: a moderated mediation model of
problematic Facebook use, age, neuroticism, and extraversion at 3, BMC Psych. 10, 279 (2022),
https://doi.org/10.1186/s40359-022-00990-7.
40
Von Tristan Harris, The Slot Machine in Your Pocket, Spiegel International (July 27, 2016),
https://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/smartphone-addiction-is-part-of-the- design-a- 1104237.html.
42
“Why We Build Feeds” (Oct. 4, 2019), at 1.41
170. The addictive nature of Meta, YouTube, Snap, and TikTok’s platforms and the
complex and psychologically manipulative design of their algorithms are unknown to ordinary
consumers, particularly minors.
171. Instead of disclosing the addictive and harmful nature of their social media
platforms, Defendants go to significant lengths to prevent transparency by making public
statements about the safety of their platforms that are not true and posing as “free” platforms.
172. Meta, YouTube, and TikTok’s algorithms adapt to promote whatever user
experiences will trigger minor users’ engagement and maximize their screen time. Once a minor
user engages with abusive, harmful, or destructive experiences, Defendants’ algorithms will direct
the minor user to experiences that are progressively more abusive, harmful, and destructive to
maximize the user’s screen time.
173. For example, Defendants manipulate human psychology using the same techniques
deployed by casinos and slot machines, including by the use of intermittent variable rewards
(“IVR”), which work by tapping into the human reward pathway that regulates dopamine
41
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/21600853-tier1_rank_exp_1019.
43
production. Through IVR, Defendants space out dopamine-triggering stimuli vis-à-vis staggering
user rewards on their platforms. IVR causes users to engage with the platform again and again, not
disengaging because there is an anticipatory “hit” of dopamine right around the corner. As a result,
minor users anticipate the next “hit” of dopamine, creating the same craving effect experienced by
gambling addicts.
174. Defendants such as Instagram intentionally delay the loading time of content with
each scroll or refresh to mimic the same anticipatory dopamine reward that casinos use. Defendants
also knowingly manipulate the reward pathways of users by giving a carefully-engineered moment
to build anticipation, just like the spinning of the reels or the shuffling of the cards in a casino.
Whenever user content receives a “like” or a “heart,” Defendants’ platforms provide a reward to
minors for their use, leading to additional use and addiction.
175. Defendants deliberately and intentionally employ these schemes to encourage use
by teens and children, who are especially vulnerable due to their developing brains. Young brains
are especially susceptible to Defendants’ strategies and manipulation. Between the ages of 10 and
12, children undergo fundamental changes in their neurological reward pathways that promote
extra dopamine and oxytocin rewards for socially advantageous behavior such as admiration,
attention, and approval from others.42 Unlike adults with a more developed prefrontal cortex to
regulate emotions and who have a more developed sense of self, developing adolescents have a
limited capacity to resist emotional and social pressures and regulate impulses. As a result, they
seek admiration, attention, and approval from others with much more persistence than adults.
176. Defendants have knowingly, deliberately, and intentionally designed and managed
their social media platforms in a way that endangers minors. Although Defendants know that their
42
Zara Abrams, Why young brains are especially vulnerable to social media, Am. Psych. Ass’n (Aug. 25, 2022),
https://www.apa.org/news/apa/2022/social-media-children-teens.
44
social media platforms harm minors, they continue to develop increasingly sophisticated
technologies and methods to ensure minors are engaged with their platforms more intensively and
for longer periods.
177. Defendants’ efforts have been successful, as minors increasingly spend time on
social media platforms. Not only are adolescents particularly vulnerable to Defendants’
psychological manipulations and resulting addiction, but they are also at much greater risk of
developing mental disorders as a result of their social media usage driven by Defendants.
VII. DEFENDANTS’ PLATFORMS CAUSE HARM TO MINORS
Defendants’ Encourage and Cause Increased Usage of Their Platforms by

Minors
178. The addiction created by Defendants and compulsion to use social media have
negative mental health consequences on minors. Defendants have driven this compulsion and have
contributed to the increased mental health disorders experienced by minors, including anxiety,
depression, eating disorders, and suicide.
179. Defendants were the cause of the current youth mental health crisis long before the
pandemic. But the crisis worsened during the pandemic, as school children spent more and more
time online and increased their exposure to Defendants’ platforms and manipulations. During
remote learning and as students returned to school, there was an increased incidence of students
paying attention to Defendants’ social media products while in class in lieu of being mentally
present in the classroom.
180. Prior to the pandemic, American adolescents increasingly used social media for
substantial portions of their day, increasing usage by 3% per year for tweens and 11% per year for
45
teens.43 Following 2019, social media usage increased at a 17% per year pace, with an average of
8 hours and 39 minutes of daily usage by teens in 2021.44 Reviews of global studies confirm drastic
increases in screen usage as social interactions shifted online.45
181. A comparison of Pew Research studies from 2014-2015 to studies in 2022 confirms
a stark increase in the proportion of time spent online by teens:46
43
The Common Sense Census: Media Use by Tweens and Teens, Common Sense (2021),
https://www.commonsensemedia.org/sites/default/files/research/report/8-18-census-integrated-report-final-
web_0.pdf.
44
Id.
45
A review of 46 research studies globally found that on average screen time for children and adolescents increased
by 52% (84 minutes per day) during the pandemic. See Sheri Madigan et al., Assessment of Changes in Child and
Adolescent Screen Time During the Covid-19 Pandemic, JAMA Pediatrics (Nov. 7, 2022),
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/fullarticle/2798256.
46
46
182. As part of that extreme growth in overall social media usage, social media
dependence increased, with 54% of teens saying it would be hard to give up social media.47
183. Confirming this explosion of social media usage by youths, a significant proportion
of teens report using Defendants’ social media platforms almost constantly.
184. The specific mix of platform use is based on current trends, with TikTok not even
registering in 2018 surveys, but being the second-highest used platform in 2022.
47
Id.
47
48
185. Notably, increased usage has led teens to report a decreasing enjoyment of social
media.49
Minors’ Brains Are Particularly Susceptible to Manipulation by Defendants
186. In February 2023, during the Senate Judiciary Committee’s hearing on social
media’s impact on child, teen, and adolescents’ mental health, Senator Richard Blumenthal stated
that America is in the midst of “a public health emergency egregiously and knowingly exacerbated
48
See Monica Anderson & Jingjing Jiang, Teens, Social Media and Technology 2018, Pew Research Center (May 31,
2018), https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2018/05/31/teens-social-media-technology-2018/.
49
See Victoria Rideout et al., 2021 The Common Sense Census: Media Use by Tween and Teens at Table D, Common
Sense (Mar. 9, 2022), https://www.commonsensemedia.org/research/the-common-sense-census-media-use-by-
tweens-and-teens-2021.
48
by Big Tech. Aggravated by toxic content on eating disorders, bullying, even suicide. Driven by
Big Tech’s black box algorithms, leading children down dark rabbit holes.”50
187. During adolescence, the brain is still developing and is associated with
psychosocial immaturity. Numerous studies have concluded that excessive use of social media can
have a detrimental effect on the mental well-being of youth and teens. Social media use, especially
compulsive or excessive use, can result in various psychological disorders, including behavioral,
developmental, emotional, and mental disorders, such as anxiety, depression, thoughts of suicide,
and eating disorders.
188. This is exacerbated because teens’ brains are not yet fully developed in regions
related to risk evaluation, emotional regulation, and impulse control. MRI studies have shown that
the prefrontal cortex is one of the last regions of the brain to mature. The frontal lobes—and, in
particular, the prefrontal cortex—of the brain play an essential part in higher-order cognitive
functions, impulse control, and executive decision- making. These regions of the brain are central
to the process of planning and decision-making, including the evaluation of future consequences
and the weighing of risk and reward. They are also essential to the ability to control emotions and
inhibit impulses. During childhood and adolescence, the brain undergoes myelination, the process
through which the neural pathways connecting different parts of the brain become insulated with
white fatty tissue called myelin. The brain also undergoes “pruning”—the paring off of unused
synapses, leading to more efficient neural connections. Through myelination and pruning, the
brain’s frontal lobes change to help the brain work faster and more efficiently, improving
50
Press Release, Blumenthal Calls on Congress to Pass Kids Online Safety Legislation During Senate Judiciary
Committee Hearing, Sen. Richard Blumenthal, (Feb. 14, 2023), https://www.blumenthal.senate.gov/newsroom/press/
release/blumenthal-calls-on-congress-to-pass-kids-online-safety-legislation-during-senate-judiciary-committee-
hearing.
49
the “executive” functions of the frontal lobes, including impulse control and risk evaluation. This
shift in the brain’s composition continues throughout adolescence and into young adulthood.
189. For minors, important aspects of brain maturation remain incomplete, including
those associated with executive functions and emotion and cognition. These parts of the brain that
are critical for control of impulses, emotions, and mature decision-making are still developing in
teens. Defendants’ social media platforms are designed to exploit minors’ diminished decision-
making capacity, impulse control, emotional immaturity, and lack of psychological resiliency.
Studies have found that immature brains may not possess sufficient self-control to deal with the
overwhelming aspects of social media and may lead minors to engage in addictive usage patterns,
which Defendants encourage.51
190. Defendants know, or in the exercise of reasonable care should know, that because
their minor users’ frontal lobes are not fully developed, those users experience enhanced dopamine
responses to stimuli on Defendants’ social media platforms and are much more likely to become
addicted to Defendants’ platforms. Minors also exercise poor judgment in their social media
activity and act impulsively in response to negative social media encounters.
191. Defendants also know, or in the exercise of reasonable care should know, that minor
users of their social media platforms are much more likely to sustain serious physical and
psychological harm through their social media use than adult users. Nevertheless, Defendants
knowingly designed their social media platforms to be addictive to minors and failed to include in
their platform designs any safeguards to account for and ameliorate the psychosocial immaturity of
their minor users.
51
Nino Gugushvili et al., Facebook use intensity and depressive symptoms: a moderated mediation model of
problematic Facebook use, age, neuroticism, and extraversion at 3, BMC Psych. 10, 279 (Nov. 28, 2022),
https://doi.org/10.1186/s40359-022-00990-7.
50
Defendants Have Caused a Significant Mental Health Toll on Minors
192. A 2018 study on the effect of screen time associated with the use of electronic
devices showed that staring at electronic screens is not healthy for teens.52 First, this study
concluded that: (i) “After 1 h[our]/day of use, more hours of daily screen time were associated
with lower psychological well-being, including less curiosity, lower self-control, more
distractibility, more difficulty making friends, less emotional stability, being more difficult to care
for, and inability to finish tasks[;]” (ii) Among teens aged 14 to 17, high users of screens (7+
hours/day) were more than twice as likely [as low users of screens (1 hour/day)] to ever have been
diagnosed with depression or anxiety, ever have been treated by a mental health professional, or
taken medication for a psychological or behavioral issue in the last 12 months[;] and (3) “[M]ore
hours of daily screen time were associated with lower psychological well-being, including less
curiosity, lower self-control, more distractibility, more difficulty making friends, less emotional
stability, being more difficult to care for, and inability to finish tasks.”53
193. A 2021 United States Surgeon General advisory report states that mental,
emotional, developmental, and/or behavioral disorders are common among American children,
with one in five children between the ages of 3-17 suffering from one or more of these disorders.54
Further, “[f]rom 2009 to 2019, the share of high school students who reported persistent feelings
of sadness or hopelessness increased by 40%[,]” the share “seriously considering attempting
suicide” increased by 36%, and the share creating a suicide plan increased by 44%.55
52
Jean M. Twenge & W. Keith Campbell, Associations between screen time and lower psychological well-being
among children and adolescents: Evidence from a population-based study, 12 Preventive Med. Rep. 271-83 (Oct. 18,
2018), https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6214874/.
53
Id.
54
U.S. Surgeon General Issues Advisory on Youth Mental Health Crisis Further Exposed by COVID-19 Pandemic
U.S. Dep’t of Health & Human Services (Dec. 7, 2021), https://public3.pagefreezer.com/browse/HHS.gov
/30-12-2021T15:27/https://www.hhs.gov/about/news/2021/12/07/us-surgeon-general-issues-advisory-on-youth-
mental-health-crisis-further-exposed-by-covid-19-pandemic.html
55
Id.
51
194. Cyberbullying and abusive behavior are also prevalent on Defendants’ social media
platforms. A Pew Research study from 2018 determined that one in six teenagers has experienced
at least one of the following forms of abusive behavior online: (1) name-calling (42%); (2)
spreading false rumors (32%); (3) receiving unsolicited explicit images (25%); (4) having their
activities and whereabouts tracked by someone other than a parent (21%); (5) someone making
physical threats (16%); and (6) having explicit images of them shared without their consent (7%).
The survey found that 90% of teens believe online harassment is a problem for people their age,
and 63% identify it as a “major problem.”56
195. Usage of Defendants’ social media platforms can also lead to disordered eating and
sleep disturbances. A 2019 NIH study found a correlation between a greater number of social
media accounts, as well as a greater amount of daily time spent on social media, specifically
Snapchat and Instagram, and a higher incidence of eating disorders among young girls.57 Another
study of young adults found “consistent, substantial, and progressive associations between SM
[social media] use and sleep disturbance,” which “has important clinical implications for the health
and well-being of young adults.”58
196. In fact, numerous studies show that adolescents are susceptible to mental health
problems and psychological disorders linked to social media usage, including depression and
56
Monica Anderson, A Majority of Teens Have Experience Some Form of Cyberbullying, Pew Research Center (Sept.
27, 2018), https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2018/09/27/a-majority-of-teens-have-experienced-some-form-of-
cyberbullying/.
57
Simon M. Wilksch et al., The relationship between social media use and disordered eating in young adolescents,
53 Int’l J. Eating Disorders at 96-106 (Jan. 2020), https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31797420/.
58
Jessica C. Levenson et al., The Association between Social Media Use and Sleep Disturbance Among Young Adults,
85 Preventive Med. 36-41 (Apr. 2016), https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0091743516000025.
52
suicide.59 In addition, there is “evidence that technology-based social comparison and feedback-
seeking behaviors may be associated with depressive symptoms among adolescents.”60
197. This youth mental health crisis has been caused by Defendants’ willful, reckless,
intentional, and/or negligent conduct. Defendants designed and marketed their social media
platforms to addict youth so that they could profit. Defendants did this because they knew youth
are a particularly profitable target audience, and thus much of Defendants’ advertising efforts and
revenues are focused on and derived from minors.
Defendants’ Conduct Has Harmed the City of Providence and Its Schools
198. Defendants’ fueling of addiction and social media usage has led to a mental health
crisis that has placed severe burdens and financial strains on local communities, including the City
of Providence, and its schools.
199. Social media has drastically changed the high school and middle school experience
of students across the nation. As succinctly reported, “The youth mental health crisis is not getting
better, and schools are increasingly being pressed into service as first responders amid rising rates
of suicidal ideation, overdoses and gun violence.”61
200. Youth mental health services are provided through most local communities, like
the City of Providence, and public schools, like Plaintiff’s schools.
201. As one of the primary providers of these services, public schools have been
inundated by the increase in youth mental health issues, many associated with increased social
59
See, e.g., Jean M. Twenge et al., Increases in Depressive Symptoms, Suicide-Related Outcomes, and Suicide Rates
Among U.S. Adolescents After 2010 and Links to Increased New Media Screen Time, 6 Clinical Psych. Sci. 3-17
(Nov. 14, 2017), https://doi.org/10.1177/2167702617723376.
60
Jacqueline Nesi & Mitchell J. Prinstein, Using Social Media for Social Comparison and Feedback-Seeking: Gender
and Popularity Moderate Associations with Depressive Symptoms, 43 J. Abnormal Child Psych. 1427-38 (Nov. 2015),
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5985443/.
61
Sabrina Moreno, The Funding Cliff for Student Mental Health, Axios (Feb. 2, 2023),
https://www.axios.com/2023/02/02/funding-cliff-student-mental-health.
53
media use. In the 2021-22 school year, nearly all public schools reported providing mental health
services to their students. 97% of public schools now provide mental health services in some form,
with over two-thirds of schools reporting an increase of students seeking such services since
2020.62 Only 12% of schools strongly agreed they could effectively provide mental health services
to students in need, and just over half believed they could effectively provide these services.
Among the factors listed by those that did not strongly agree, 61% stated they have “insufficient
mental health professional staff coverage to manage caseload[,]” 57% stated they have “inadequate
access to licensed mental health professionals[,]” and 48% stated they have “inadequate
funding.”63
202. Schools are struggling not only to provide students with mental health services but
also to deliver an adequate education because of the youth mental health crisis driven by
Defendants. Students in grades 6-12 identify depression, stress, and anxiety as the most prevalent
obstacles to learning.64 Most middle school and high school students also fail to get enough sleep
on school nights, which contributes to poor academic performance.65 These reported mental health
outcomes are the most common symptoms of excessive social media use.
203. Schools also report substantial increases in tardiness, skipping class, bullying,
fighting, threats, use of electronic devices during class, and other classroom disruptions.
62
Press Release, Roughly Half of Public Schools Report That They Can Effectively Provide Mental Health Services
to All Students in Need, National Center for Education Statistics (May 31, 2022),
https://nces.ed.gov/whatsnew/press_releases/05_31_2022_2.asp.
63
Results from the April 2022 School Pulse Panel, U.S. Dep’t of Educ., Institute of Education Sciences (Apr. 12,
2022), https://ies.ed.gov/schoolsurvey/spp/SPP_April_Infographic_Mental_Health_and_Well_Being.
pdf. See also, https://ies.ed.gov/schoolsurvey/spp/ (2022 School Pulse Panel”).
64
Insights From the Student Experience, Part I: Emotional and Mental Health, at 2-3, YouthTruth (2022),
https://youthtruthsurvey.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/YouthTruth_EMH_102622.pdf.
65
Anne G. Wheaton et al., Short Sleep Duration Among Middle School and High School Students-United States, 2015,
67(3) Morbidity & Mortality Wkly. Rpt. 85-90 (Jan. 26, 2018),
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/67/wr/mm6703a1.htm.
54
204. Local communities and schools do not have sufficient funding or mental health staff
to address today’s youth mental health crisis.
205. Given this shortage and the extent of the youth mental health crisis, the number of
teens and adolescents waiting in emergency rooms for mental health treatment for suicide
nationwide has tripled from 2019 to 2021.66
66
Stephen Stock et al., Children languish in emergency rooms awaiting mental health care, CBS News (Feb. 27,
2023, 8:02 am), https://www.cbsnews.com/news/emergency-rooms-children-mental-health/.
55
206. Local communities and school districts have borne increased costs and expenses in
response to the youth mental health crisis fueled by Defendants, including costs associated with:
• hiring additional mental health staff (41% of public schools added staff to focus on student
mental health);67
• developing additional mental health resources (46% of public schools created or expanded
mental health programs for students, 27% added student classes on social, emotional, and
mental health and 25% offered guest speakers for students on mental health);68
• training teachers to help students with their mental health (56% of public schools offered
professional development to teachers on helping students with mental health);69
• increasing and hiring additional personnel for disciplinary services in response to increased
bullying and harassment over social media;
• addressing property damage caused by students acting out because of mental, social, and
emotional problems;
• diverting time and resources from educational instruction to notify parents and guardians
of students’ behavioral issues and attendance;
• investigating and responding to threats made against schools and students over social
media; and
• updating student handbooks and policies to address use of Defendants’ platforms.
207. The City of Providence has been directly harmed by the mental health crisis among
youth in its community and schools, which has been caused by Defendants.
208. Plaintiff’s community and schools have been directly impacted by the mental health
crisis among youth and have been tasked with addressing the surge in mental, emotional, and social
issues among this population. Plaintiff’s young residents and students confront mental health
issues now more than ever before due to their excessive social media usage.
67
Nirmita Panchal et al., The Lanscape of School-Based Mental Health Services, Kaiser Family Foundation (Sept. 6,
2022), https://www.kff.org/other/issue-brief/the-landscape-of-school-based-mental-health-services/.
68
Id.
69
Id.
56
209. Plaintiff has borne the cost of the increased need for youth mental health services.
210. To address the decline in minors’ mental, emotional, and social health and resulting
misconduct, Plaintiff has been forced to expend resources that would otherwise be used to deliver
education and other community services.
211. Plaintiff requires funding to address the mental health crisis and nuisance
Defendants have created and continue to exacerbate with their design of, and engineered addiction
to, their social media platforms.
VIII. THE COMMUNICATIONS DECENCY ACT ALLOWS COMPUTER SERVICE

COMPANIES TO LIMIT HARMFUL CONTENT
212. As indicated by its title, the express purpose of the Communications Decency Act,
47 U.S.C. §230(c), is “[p]rotection [of] ‘Good Samaritan’ blocking and screening of offensive
material.”
213. The Act states that “[n]o provider or user of an interactive computer service shall
be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content
provider.” 47 U.S.C. §230(c).
214. The Act also asserts that providers or users may not be held liable for actions taken
“to restrict access to or availability of material” or to provide others with the means to “restrict
access” to material “that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy,
excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is
constitutionally protected.” 47 U.S.C. §230(c)(2)(A).
215. These provisions of the Act are intended to protect those attempting to restrict the
deluge of harmful content on internet platforms and cannot possibly serve to shield Defendants
from purposefully designing their Social Media platforms in ways that deliberately harm
adolescence.
57
216. Plaintiff expressly disavows any claim or allegation that attempts to hold
Defendants liable as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by third parties within
the plain meaning of the Communications Decency Act and as interpreted by applicable law.
217. Plaintiff’s claims stem from Defendants’ conduct as the designers and marketers of
social media platforms that have harmed children and created an undeniable mental health crisis
among America’s youth.
218. The nature of Defendants’ businesses centers around the use of design choices that
encourage users to spend excessive amounts of time on their platforms without regard to the
devastating consequences that this has on the mental health and well-being of America’s youth.
Plaintiff’s claims are predicated on this conduct.
IX. CLAIMS FOR RELIEF
COUNT ONE - PUBLIC NUISANCE
219. Plaintiff repeats, reasserts, and incorporates the allegations contained above as if
fully set forth herein.
220. A public nuisance is an unreasonable interference with a right common to the
general public.
221. In addition, a public nuisance is behavior that unreasonably interferes with the
health, safety, peace, comfort, or convenience of the general community.
222. Plaintiff and the minors in its community and students in its schools have a right to
be free from conduct that endangers their health, comfort, and safety. Yet Defendants have
engaged in conduct which endangers or injures the health, comfort, and safety of minors in
Plaintiff’s community and the students in Plaintiff’s schools by design and operational choices that
have maximized profit over the well-being of its minor users as well as by explicitly targeting
tween- and teenage children for monetary purposes.
58
223. Each Defendant has created or assisted in the creation of a condition that is injurious
to the health and safety of Plaintiff and minors in its community and schools and interferes with
the comfortable enjoyment of life and property of entire communities and/or neighborhoods.
224. Defendants’ conduct has caused increased mental health issues and a severe
disruption of the public peace, order, and safety, including disruption of schools, classes, the
learning environment, and the community at large. Defendants’ conduct is ongoing and continues
to produce permanent and long-lasting damage.
225. The health, comfort, and safety of the minors in Plaintiff’s community and students
in Plaintiff’s schools, including those who use, have used, or will use Defendants’ social media
platforms, as well as those affected by users of these social media platforms, are matters of
substantial public interest and of legitimate concern to Plaintiff.
226. Defendants’ conduct has impacted and continues to impact Plaintiff and is likely to
continue causing significant harm to Plaintiff and minors in Plaintiff’s community and schools.
227. But for Defendants’ actions, there is no doubt that mental health issues in minors
would not be as widespread as they are today, and the massive epidemic youth and teen depression,
anxiety, and self-harm that currently exists would have been averted.
228. Logic, common sense, justice, policy, and precedent indicate Defendants’ conduct
has caused the damage and harm complained of herein. Defendants knew or reasonably should
have known that their behavior regarding the risks and benefits of the use of Defendants’ social
media platforms were causing harm. Thus, the public nuisance caused by Defendants to Plaintiff
was reasonably foreseeable, including the financial and economic losses incurred by Plaintiff.
59
229. Defendants’ actions were, at the very least, a substantial factor in the youth mental
health epidemic and in the public health crisis in communities and schools, including in the City
of Providence.
230. Defendants’ conduct in creating and maintaining the public nuisance were neither
fully regulated nor required by any federal or Rhode Island law.
231. The public nuisance alleged herein can be abated and further recurrence of such
harm and inconvenience can be abated.
232. Plaintiff has been, and continues to be, directly and proximately injured by
Defendants’ actions in creating a public nuisance.
233. Plaintiff suffered special injuries distinguishable from those suffered by the general
public.
234. Defendants’ conduct was accompanied by wanton, willful, and reckless disregard
of persons who foreseeably might be harmed by their acts and omissions.
COUNT TWO - NEGLIGENCE
235. Plaintiff repeats, reasserts, and incorporates the allegations contained above as if
fully set forth herein.
236. Each Defendant failed to act as a reasonably prudent person would under
circumstances where they were offering Social Media platforms to children.
237. Each Defendant owed a duty of care to minors and to Plaintiff, including because
each Defendant knew or foreseeably should have known that its conduct in designing, setting up,
promoting, managing, and operating its social media platforms would inflict severe mental harms
on minors, including school children, throughout the country, which Plaintiff would have to
address.
60
238. Each Defendant also owed a duty to advertise their social media platforms in a
truthful and non-misleading way and to monitor and report suspicious behavior or harmful
activities.
239. Defendants further had a duty to provide accurate, true, and correct information
about the risks of minors using Defendants’ social media platforms, and appropriate, complete,
and accurate warnings about the potential adverse effects of extended social media use, in
particular, social media content Defendants directed via their algorithms to minor users.
240. Each Defendant has breached, and continues to breach, its duties of care owed to
minors and to Plaintiff through its affirmative malfeasance, actions, business decisions, and
policies in the development, setup, management, maintenance, operation, marketing, advertising,
promotion, supervision, and control of its respective platforms.
241. As alleged above, each Defendant knew or, in the exercise of reasonable care,
should have known of the hazards and dangers of Defendants’ platforms, specifically the addictive,
compulsive, and repetitive use of Defendants’ platforms, which foreseeably can lead to a cascade
of negative effects, including but not limited to dissociative behavior, withdrawal symptoms, social
isolation, damage to body image and self-worth, increased risk behavior, exposure to predators,
sexual exploitation, suicidal ideation, and profound mental health issues for minors, including but
not limited to depression, body dysmorphia, anxiety, suicidal ideation, self-harm, insomnia, eating
disorders, death, and other harmful effects.
242. Each Defendant also knew or, in the exercise of reasonable care, should have
known that parents and minor users of Defendants’ social media platforms were unaware of the
risks and the magnitude of the risks associated with the use of the platforms, including but not
limited to the risks of extended social media use and the likelihood that algorithm-based
61
recommendations would expose adolescent users to content that is violent, sexual, or encourages
self-harm, among other things.
243. Each Defendant further knew or, in the exercise of the reasonable care, should have
known that their conduct violated the duty of care to minors and to Plaintiff, including providing
true and correct information concerning the risks of using Defendants’ platforms and appropriate,
complete, and accurate warnings concerning the potential adverse effects of using the Social Media
platforms.
244. Each Defendant also knew or, in the exercise of the reasonable care, should have
known that their conduct could be remedied and abated.
245. Defendants, by action and inaction, representation, and omission, breached their
duties of reasonable care, failed to exercise ordinary care, and failed to act as reasonably careful
persons and/or companies would act under the circumstances in the design, research, development,
testing, marketing, supply, promotion, advertisement, operation, and distribution of their social
media platforms, in that Defendants designed, researched, developed, tested, marketed, supplied,
promoted, advertised, operated, and distributed social media platforms that Defendants knew or
had reason to know would negatively impact the mental health of minor users, and failed to prevent
or adequately warn of these risks and injuries.
246. As a direct and proximate cause of each Defendant’s unreasonable and negligent
conduct, Plaintiff has suffered and will continue to suffer harm, and is entitled to damages in an
amount determined at trial.
247. Defendants made conscious decisions not to warn or inform the public, including
Plaintiff and minors in Plaintiff’s community and schools, even as the evidence mounted of the
severe harms Defendants’ platforms were inflicting on the nation’s children.
62
X. REQUEST FOR RELIEF
WHEREFORE, Plaintiff demands judgment as follows:
A. That acts alleged above be adjudged and decreed to have created, or been a
substantial factor in creating, a public nuisance;
C. A judgment against Defendants for the compensatory and punitive damages
sustained by Plaintiff, and for any additional damages, penalties, and other monetary relief
provided by applicable law;
D. An order providing injunctive and other equitable relief as necessary to protect the
interests of Plaintiff and minors in its community and schools;
E. By awarding Plaintiff prejudgment and post-judgment interest as provided by law,
and that such interest be awarded at the highest legal rate from and after service of this Complaint;
F. The costs of this suit, including reasonable attorney fees; and
G. Such other and further relief as the Court deems just and proper.
XI. JURY TRIAL DEMANDED
Plaintiff requests a jury trial, under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 38, on all claims so
triable.
DATED: April 28, 2023 Respectfully submitted,
/s/ Jeffrey B. Pine

Jeffrey B. Pine (R.I. Bar No. 2278)
LYNCH AND PINE
One Park Row, 5th Floor
Providence, RI 02903
(401) 274-3306
[email protected]
and
63
/s/ Patrick C. Lynch

Patrick C. Lynch (R. I. Bar. No. 4867)
LYNCH AND PINE
One Park Row, 5th Floor
Providence, RI 02903
(401) 274-3306
[email protected]
Joseph H. Meltzer
Melissa L. Troutner
Tyler S. Graden
Jordan E. Jacobson
KESSLER TOPAZ
MELTZER & CHECK, LLP
280 King of Prussia Road
Radnor, PA 19087
Telephone: (610) 667-7706
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
64

Providence Lawsuit Over Social Media

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Case 1:23-cv-00170-MSM-PAS Document 1 Filed 04/28/23 Page 1 of 66 PageID #: 1

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

CITY OF PROVIDENCE, Civil Action No. 1:23-cv-170

META PLATFORMS, INC., FACEBOOK

Holdings, LLC; Facebook Operations, LLC; (collectively referred to as “Facebook”); Meta

Google, and YouTube entities are referred to as “YouTube”) (collectively, “Defendants” or

“Defendant Social Media Companies”).

suicide rate among persons aged 10-24 increased 57.4%.”1

Hospital Association to declare a national emergency.3

5. These dramatic increases in youth mental health deterioration have directly

7. As a means of increasing revenue as much as possible, Defendants deliberately

advanced artificial intelligence and machine-learning systems.

8. As part of this quest to maximize revenue, Defendants exploit adolescent users’

still-developing decision-making capacity, impulse control, emotional maturity, and poor

depressed as light users.”8

which preys on their youngest and most vulnerable users.

address the ongoing youth mental health crisis.

affects Plaintiff’s schools’ ability to fulfill their educational mission.

the ever-growing needs of youth facing this mental health crisis.

II. JURISDICTION AND VENUE

under Rhode Island law and the United States Constitution.

21. Plaintiff City of Providence, Rhode Island (“Plaintiff”) is a municipal corporation

with a principal address of 25 Dorrance Street, Providence, Rhode Island.

22. Plaintiff’s public schools have an enrollment of over 21,000 students.

27. Defendant Meta’s subsidiaries include: Facebook Holdings, LLC; Facebook

California. Defendant Meta is the sole member of Facebook Holdings.

29. Defendant Facebook Operations, LLC (“Facebook Operations”) was organized

California. Defendant Meta is the sole member of Facebook Operations.

and its principal place of business is in Menlo Park, California.

31. Defendant Meta Platforms Technologies, LLC (“Meta Technologies”) was

is the sole member of Meta Technologies.

is the sole member of Instagram.

Inc. (“TikTok Inc.).

38. Defendant ByteDance Ltd. (“ByteDance Ltd.”) is a global company incorporated

Alphabet Inc. and the managing member of Google LLC (“Google”).

or participated in the acts and practices set forth in this Complaint.

practices set forth in this Complaint.

IV. FACTUAL BACKGROUND

using their products as much as possible.”14

Meta’s Purposefully Manipulative and Addictive Social Media Platform

dangerous, particularly when used by teens and children.

user has, not the user’s choices.

anxiety, and suicide and self-harm.

matter the circumstances.

1. Meta’s Facebook Platform

billion daily users of as 2022.16

57. In 2005, Facebook expanded and became accessible to students at twenty-one

58. Facebook later expanded eligibility to employees of several companies, including

minors, without considering the consequences of this affirmative choice.

creating content for users to post on its platform.

consequences for Facebook’s young users.

63. Additionally, Facebook’s messaging system is harmful to underage users as it

when they are in school.

these potential connections are harmful.

As Sean Parker, Meta’s first President, explained in a 2017 interview:

remarked in the same interview.

73. Similarly, in testimony before Congress in September 2020, Tim Kendall,

in ways it knew to be dangerous in order to maximize engagement. Mr. Kendall explained:

We sought to mine as much human attention as possible and turn it into