Lawsuit Alleging Instagram Harms Children Is Allowed to Move Forward

The logo of Instagram (L) and Threads in Nantes, France, on March 7, 2024. Loic Venance/AFP via Getty Images

A lawsuit accusing Meta-owned platform Instagram of posing risks to children’s well-being can proceed in court, a district court ruled on Monday.

The class action lawsuit, filed in November 2021 by the Ohio Public Employees Retirement System, accused Meta of having “knowingly exploited its most vulnerable users—including children throughout the world—in order to drive corporate profits.” It claimed Meta misrepresented to investors that its product “does not harm children, that the Company takes aggressive and effective measures to stop the spread of harmful content, and that Facebook applies its standards of behavior equally to all users.”

The lawsuit pointed to a 2021 Wall Street Journal (WSJ) report citing internal Facebook documents that claim Instagram was harmful to a sizable number of teenage girl users. The report noted a 2019 Facebook presentation that said, “We make body image issues worse for one in three teen girls.”

Another slide stated that “teens blame Instagram for increases in the rate of anxiety and depression.”

A presentation claimed that among teens who had suicidal thoughts, 13 percent of users from the UK and 6 percent from the United States blamed it on Instagram.

Facebook “knows its platforms contain flaws that cause significant harm to users, but which the Company makes minimal or ineffectual efforts to address,” the lawsuit stated.

Meta filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit. In a Sept. 30 order, District Judge Araceli Martinez-Olguin of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California dismissed certain claims made by the plaintiff but allowed the claims that related to the threat posed by Instagram to children to move forward.

Martinez-Olguin noted that the plaintiff challenged several statements made by Meta defending Instagram’s impact on young users. These statements claimed there is “little research on Instagram’s impact on children,” that social media is not “inherently bad” for teens and kids, and that Meta is “committed to protecting child safety.”

The Ohio Public Employees Retirement System said such statements from Facebook were false since Meta’s internal research on Instagram revealed that the app “makes teens feel very bad,” according to the order.

Martinez-Olguin ruled that the plaintiff had “sufficiently alleged falsity” to such statements and allowed claims of Instagram being harmful to children to continue in court.

The Epoch Times reached out to Meta for comment but didn’t receive a reply by publication time.

Harms to Youngsters

Following the publication of the WSJ report in 2021, Karina Newton, Head of public policy at Instagram, shared a post dismissing the accusations.

The WSJ story “focuses on a limited set of findings and casts them in a negative light,” the post said. Instagram’s research showed the app “makes things better or has no effect, but some, particularly those who were already feeling down, said Instagram may make things worse,” it said.

“In the research world, this isn’t surprising or unexpected. Issues like negative social comparison and anxiety exist in the world, so they’re going to exist on social media, too. That doesn’t change the fact that we take these findings seriously, and we set up a specific effort to respond to this research and change Instagram for the better,” Newton said.

Meta is facing multiple lawsuits on the issue of harm to children. In October last year, attorneys general from 33 states filed a joint lawsuit against Instagram and Meta claiming that the firms damaged the mental health of youngsters.

The complaint alleged that Meta’s design choices and practices contribute to young users’ “susceptibility to addiction.” The lawsuit cited research showing an association between the use of these platforms and psychological issues such as depression, anxiety, and insomnia.

In December, New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez filed a lawsuit against Meta and its subsidiaries arguing that the platforms were not safe for children. It said that Meta fails to remove child sexual abuse material from its platforms, thus enabling adults to get in touch and solicit underage users.