The article is light on the actual allegations, but at least they link to the complaint [1] (so few articles do). The claims are: Public Nuisance, Negligence, and Gross Negligence.
The special damage they claim to have suffered seems to primarily relate to expanding and diverting resources to deal with mental health issues of students.
The table of contents of the complaint is a good summary of their assertions, including:
Defendants’ apps have created a youth mental health crisis.
Defendants target children as a core market, hooking kids on their addictive social media platforms.
Children are uniquely susceptible to Defendants’ addictive apps.
Defendants design their apps to attract and addict youth.
Millions of kids use Defendants’ products compulsively.
Defendants' defective products encourage dangerous "challenges."
Defendants' defective social media apps facilitate and contribute to the sexual exploitation and sextortion of children, and the ongoing production and spread of child sex abuse material online.
- Defendants’ apps have created a youth mental health crisis.
Causality is really hard to establish, possibly impossible in this case. Nonetheless, there does appear to be a youth mental health crisis, and it arose around the time of the smart phone. https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/honestly-its-probably-the-phon...
- Defendants target children as a core market, hooking kids on their addictive social media platforms.
It certainly appears that way to me; but it would help to get actual documentation of intent.
- Children are uniquely susceptible to Defendants’ addictive apps.
There is a lot of science that says that teens are vulnerable to addiction; the dual systems view, a pretty influential perspective, is that sensitivity to reward (particularly social rewards) increases dramatically in adolescence, but cognitive control lags; this leads to an increase in exploration vs exploitation, which is adaptive, but risky. I think they are on strong ground here.
- Defendants design their apps to attract and addict youth.
Like the last, documentation of intent would be the best thing for the case.
- Millions of kids use Defendants’ products compulsively.
This is probably true. Adults too. Defense is going to say that its up to parents and guardians to police the use of these apps. That argument didn't work with cigarettes and alcohol, so I'm guessing won't work here eitehr.
- Defendants' defective social media apps (a) facilitate and contribute to the sexual exploitation and sextortion of children, (b) and the ongoing production and spread of child sex abuse material online.
I've denoted one as (a) and one as (b). (b) is undoubtedly the case. (a) is more culture-war-y, but its hard to argue that a lot of the viral video content is not sexxed up*
* I'm no prude, but find it annoying that 90% of the reels that Facebook suggest to me are sexual in nature, and that the sexually arousing nature of the suggested videos grabs my eyeballs. I mean, it works. But, I don't want those kind of distractions when I'm scrolling to see what friends and family are up to. Oh look, my sister took her kids to the beach. Oh look, that couple is simulating sex on a picnic table! Oh look, Mom got her first ripe tomatoes!
Regarding evidence that social media targets children as a market and strategizes how to continue engagement (aka addiction) I actually don’t think this will be extremely hard to prove. Instagram already has internal documentation showing they’re aware that their application has a causal relationship to the harm of the mental health of teenaged girls, but obviously Instagram hasn’t done much of anything to improve things. At minimum I bet similar studies exist in other platforms in internal discussions, and gross negligence if not intent can be measured via subpoena and discovery. It would only take one higher up writing a slack message that effectively says, I want this feature done, no I don’t want this mitigating implementation that would make it less harmful.
I've recently quit Twitter and Facebook, and I must admit that these apps are mentally addictive in the same way that cigarettes are addictive. I often think about them when bored, wondering what I'm 'missing' with my friends or followers. It's taken a level of mental strength to avoid re-installing or re-activating in both cases. So in my view, the addiction is 30% of the argument. The 30% is that they cause harm, and remainder, which I agree will be more difficult to prove, is that it was done with intent.
Gaming too. And then we put it into our kid’s pockets, and started hiring psychologist to consult on game development…
They don’t stand a chance.
Part of the human experiment I guess. We’ll see where we end up. I suspect authoritarianism, rampant viruses, and a toxic environment while we entertain ourselves to death.
> This is probably true. Adults too. Defense is going to say that its up to parents and guardians to police the use of these apps. That argument didn't work with cigarettes and alcohol, so I'm guessing won't work here either.
But cigarettes and alcohol is legally age restricted. Or did that happen later?
seems like Baltimore leadership is just trying to find ways to blame other people for problems they created. They are also suing Kia on the same weak basis of "public nuisance".
I agree this case probably shouldn't succeed, but pretending that these companies have no part in a ongoing youth mental health crises, and that they arnt targeting youth purposefully, is also not the way to go about this.
The special damage they claim to have suffered seems to primarily relate to expanding and diverting resources to deal with mental health issues of students.
The table of contents of the complaint is a good summary of their assertions, including:
[1] https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23832853-maryland-sc...