This is one of the dramatized storylines of a new york family suing Meta, the parent company of Instagram for a whopping $5 billion. The critics say that IG’s layout is intentionally designed to hook children and ultimately lead to severe mental health problems.
The Story Unfolds
The case focuses on a 13-year-old female, known in the court proceedings as “AA”. Her parents support this by insisting that the platform is highly addictive and has caused her much distress. They allege that she was using the app at the age of 10 and uses it for about five hours in a day. I can only imagine having that kind of time spent on an app when you are supposed to be out there having fun, and doing homework.
The case was filed in California that alleges that Meta is aware of designing the features that force people, and especially children, to spend more time on the platform. They opine that with a never ending scrolling feature and constant updates notifications on the app, it resembles a slot machine which users cannot resist from refreshing for the updates.
Mental Health Concerns
As stated in the lawsuit, ‘AA’ suffers from anxiety when she is not able to see notifications on her Instagram. Hence, she feels neglected by her friends when they do not like or comment on her posts and this brings about a chain of worrying and nervousness.
Legal representatives of the family referred to internal documents disclosed by Frances Haugen, a former employee of Meta, who acted as a whistleblower. These internal papers released in 2021 showed that the company was fully aware of the harm that its Instagram app caused to young individuals, and did not take proper steps to fix it. However, the attention was paid to the expansion of teenagers using the site, while the main competitor, Facebook, gradually became less popular.
Seeking Justice
Specifically, the family is not only claiming for the money lost but also demanding the court to prohibit Instagram from offering some options for individuals under eighteen years old. That’s why the goal is to contribute to improving the protection of teenagers and other users who are still under construction and more sensitive to social networks’ impact.
A Meta spokesperson rejected claiming that the platform failed to protect teens, pointing out that Meta has several features aimed at helping teenagers. But the lawsuit says that these measures are inadequate and the companies’ age verification processes on Meta are weak and can be easily manipulated by kids in the digital age.
The Bigger Picture
This lawsuit is one of the issues that have cropped up regarding the effects of social media as much as the young people are concerned. The kids allege that in the same way society prevents the young persons from using other equally harmful products such as tobacco and alcohol, social media should also be banned. However, is the virtual world that our children are in utterly different from the real world to warrant not protecting them?
This particular issue specifically points towards a flaw in the Instagram algorithm where it introduces content that causes negativity, especially to the young users. I mean, imagine you are looking through heaps of beautiful pictures and selectively happy lives, it will make any person a bit depressed.
Furthermore, corporate research also revealed that Instagram tools, such as the number of post likes and beauty filters, were capable of causing negative attitudes towards comparison and low self-esteem in teenagers. Nonetheless, as this lawsuit points out, Meta ignored such matters and, with the approval of its CEO Mark Zuckerberg, went on to aggressively market its platform mainly to youths.
