U.S. social media regulation lacking
Most Republicans and Democrats can agree that Big Tech needs reining in. But given the gridlock in Congress, even popular legislative initiatives are going nowhere these days, including measures that would update the law to address fast-moving social media companies such as Meta. Unlike Europe, which is adopting holistic, modern laws, the U.S. is stuck with dysfunctional legislation-by-lawsuit.
In the latest example, dozens of state attorneys general, including Illinois’ Kwame Raoul, have targeted Meta for supposedly violating consumer protection laws by pushing “addictive” products on youngsters.
The bipartisan group of lawyers behind this litigation have compared it to the landmark Big Tobacco cases, except the “addictive” products in this case are Meta’s Facebook and Instagram.
“Meta has harnessed powerful and unprecedented technologies to entice, engage and ultimately ensnare youth and teens,” the lawsuit thunders.
But wasn’t that true of television networks a few decades ago? Plenty of baby boomers who spent Saturday mornings staring at the telly can confirm that those commercials sold a lot of Cap’n Crunch and Froot Loops, dental decay be damned.
Worse yet — from the attorneys general point of view, that is — Meta’s “motive is profit,” and the company is “seeking to maximize its financial gains.” As Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser put it, “Just like Big Tobacco and vaping companies have done in years past, Meta chose to maximize its profit at the expense of public health.”
The lawsuit’s core allegation is that Meta misled the public about the alleged dangers of its social media platforms and concealed how these platforms get several billion people around the world to spend a lot of time using them. The familiar “likes,” “alerts” and “infinite scrolls” that keep youngsters and others glued to their phones are described in the lawsuit as if they are smoking guns that the attorneys general have just discovered and dramatically flourished to shocked jurors, Hollywood-style.
Some allegations in the lawsuit sound like legitimate issues to us, including the charge that Meta routinely collects data on children under 13 without their parents’ consent, which would violate federal law. But our nonsense-detector alarm goes off when New York Attorney General Letitia James overstates, “Kids and teenagers are suffering from record levels of poor mental health, and social media companies like Meta are to blame.”
James’ broadside has its roots in the emergence of Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen, who came forward in 2021 with internal documents supposedly showing that Meta knew its products could have a negative impact on the mental health of youngsters, especially girls. But it is a long way from that assertion to blaming Meta for the declining state of mental health in America.
Even if there is a link between social media use and mental distress, it is unclear that one leads to the other. Studies have not established an increased risk for mental illnesses, such as bipolar disorder for social media users, and some therapists believe youngsters turn to social media to help them cope with broader societal stresses.
Would tossing young people off of social media altogether necessarily be positive for their well-being? Still hard to say.
Further, the term “social media” covers a lot of ground. Facebook and Instagram are one thing, LinkedIn quite another, Reddit and Pinterest quite another still. One of the ironies of the lawsuit is that it is brought by a group of aging adults supposedly intent on protecting kids, and it focuses on Facebook, which is the most studied platform but one that many kids do not use.
What is most disappointing is that while America’s attorneys general are grandstanding and regulators such as the Federal Trade Commission tinker with new ways to restrict how Meta can operate, the European Union has made real progress in broadly protecting consumers. Those going online in the EU get asked up front for their consent to data gathering and other practices they might reasonably object to. Not so here.