What This Story Is About
- The trial for Tennessee’s lawsuit against Meta is underway in Nashville.
Why It Matters
- Tennessee joined nearly every state in the country in suing the company over its content, which the state claims was meant to be addictive to children and teens.
What Happens Next
- Opening statements are set for sometime on Friday.
For Context
- Tennessee is one of 42 states suing Meta, claiming it created Instagram to be “an addiction machine.”
Catch Up
- Tennessee’s complaint alleges Meta knew its Instagram platform was harming young people, causing increased levels of depression and anxiety, hyperactivity, lack of sleep and other mental health harms.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WSMV) – The State of Tennessee’s trial against Meta for allegedly “fomenting a mental health crisis,” particularly among minors, is underway.
The trial is taking place in Nashville.
LIVE UPDATES:
9:00 a.m. – Jury selection continues as Meta cross-examines potential jurors.
Why is Tennessee suing Meta?
Tennessee joined nearly every state in the country in suing the company over its content, which the state claims was meant to be addictive to children and teens. Forty-one other states have sued the company, saying its products, particularly Instagram, are designed “to be an addiction machine.”
“Meta dedicated vast resources to understand Young Users’ psychology and behavior so it could better exploit Young Users’ developmental vulnerabilities through irresistible design features,” the lawsuit says. “Meta did this to capture an ever-increasing amount of Young Users’ time and data, for the benefit of Meta’s business.”
The state specifically points to Meta’s leadership, naming CEO Mark Zuckerberg, in allegedly knowing that Instagram “was on-balance harmful for users, and especially ruinous for young women.” The state says that Meta chose not to make this information public and instead “limited internal access to alarming findings to mitigate the risk that information would be leaked.”
In one report published by Meta, the lawsuit alleges that the company made the impression that bullying and harassment on Instagram are “extremely rare.” Meanwhile, a company internal survey allegedly found that within a week, more than a quarter of all users witnessed bullying, 8% of users were bullied and nearly 12% of all users received “unwanted advances.”
In a statement, Meta told WSMV4 that “hundreds of thousands of Tennessee teens use social media every day to talk to their friends and families, explore their interests, and find support when they need it.”
“We want them to do that in a protected space, which is why we’ve spent a decade building safe, age-appropriate defaults for teens alongside simple tools for parents to set the right boundaries for their family,” the statement continued. “We’re proud of the progress we’ve made, and we’re always working to do more.”
Meta’s mega payout
Tennessee’s trial is set to begin just two months after cases in two other states found Meta, as well as Google, liable in social media addiction lawsuits.
At the end of March, the Tennessee Bar Association announced that in California, a jury awarded $6 million to a young woman who developed depression and suicidal thoughts after becoming addicted to YouTube and Instagram. A New Mexico jury also ordered Meta to pay $375 million “after finding it misled users about product safety and enabled the sexual exploitation of children,” the bar association said.
“The cases mark a challenge to the law that generally shields online platforms from liability for user-generated content,” the Tennessee Bar Association said, “as plaintiffs successfully argued the companies’ platform design — rather than third-party content — caused harm.”
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