NYC Sues Social Media Giants For Youth Mental Crisis

New York City Mayor Eric Adams declared social media a public health hazard and sued five social media companies on Wednesday. 

The city said it is joining hundreds of school districts from across the country in filing litigation seeking to force tech giants TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, and YouTube to change their behavior and to recover the costs of addressing what many describe as a nationwide youth mental health crisis.

In a news release, the city said it spends more than $100 million on youth mental health programs and services each year.

To help address the ongoing crisis, Adams also released a social media action plan to hold social media companies accountable, provide education and support to young people and families, and study the long-term impacts of social media on youth.

The announcement builds on the Health Commissioner’s Advisory issued last month, identifying unfettered access to and use of social media as a public health hazard.

The advisory provides recommendations to parents and caregivers, health care providers, educators, and policymakers on actions that can be taken to protect children, including the recommendation to delay social media use until the age of 14.

“Over the past decade, we have seen just how addictive and overwhelming the online world can be, exposing our children to a non-stop stream of harmful content and fueling our national youth mental health crisis,” Adams said. “Our city is built on innovation and technology, but many social media platforms end up endangering our children's mental health, promoting addiction, and encouraging unsafe behavior. Today, we’re taking bold action on behalf of millions of New Yorkers to hold these companies accountable.”

The lawsuit — filed in California Superior Court by the City of New York, the Department of Education, and NYC Health and Hospitals  — seeks to hold the companies accountable for their role in creating the youth mental health crisis in New York City.

The lawsuit alleges that companies intentionally designed their platforms to purposefully manipulate and addict children and teens to social media applications with features that include:

• Using algorithms to generate feeds that keep users on the platforms longer and encourage compulsive use.

• Using mechanics akin to gambling in the design of apps, which allow for anticipation and craving for “likes” and “hearts,” and also provides continuous, personalized streams of content and advertisements.

• Manipulating users through reciprocity — a social force, especially powerful among teenagers, that describes how people feel compelled to respond to one positive action with another positive action. These platforms take advantage of reciprocity by, for example, automatically telling the sender when their message was seen or sending notifications when a message was delivered, encouraging teens to return to the platform again and again and perpetuating online engagement and immediate responses.

The complaint specifically states the companies’ intentional conduct and negligence has been a substantial factor in fueling a youth mental health crisis, which constitutes a public nuisance affecting schools, public hospitals, and communities citywide, and, as a result, that the city has had to expend significant resources to address.

Data provided in the news release indicate that in New York City, more than 38% of high school students reported feeling so sad or hopeless during the past year that they stopped engaging in their usual activities

The rate of hopelessness among New York City high schoolers in 2021 was almost 50 percent higher for Latino and Black students than for white students, and almost 70 percent higher for female students than for male students.

Today, over one-third of 13- to 17-year-old children nationwide report using social media “almost constantly” and admit this is “too much.”

Yet, more than half of these kids report that they would struggle to cut back on their social media use.

Likewise, in 2021, 77 percent of New York City high school students reported spending an average of three or more hours per school day in front of screens — not including time spent on schoolwork.