New York City Sues Social Media Companies Over 'Youth Mental Health Crisis'

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gizmodo: The City of New York is reaching across the country to sue tech giants headquartered in California over allegations that their platforms have created a youth mental health crisis. The city, along with its school districts and health department, alleges that 'gross negligence' on the part of Meta, Alphabet, Snap, and ByteDance has gotten kids hooked on social media, which has created a 'public nuisance' that is placing a strain on the city's resources.

In a 327-page complaint filed in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, the city alleges that tech companies have designed their platforms in a way that seeks to 'maximize the number of children' using them, and have built 'algorithms that wield user data as a weapon against children and fuel the addiction machine.' The city also alleges that these companies 'know children and adolescents are in a developmental stage that leaves them particularly vulnerable to the addictive effects of these features,' but 'target them anyway, in pursuit of additional profit.'

It cites data from the New York City Police Department, for instance, that show at least 16 teens have died while 'subway surfing' -- riding outside of a moving train -- a dangerous behavior which the lawsuit claims has been encouraged by social media trends. Two girls, ages 12 and 13, died earlier this month while subway surfing. It also cited survey data collected from New York high school students, which shows that 77.3% of the city's teens spend three or more hours per day on screens, which it claims has contributed to lost sleep and, in turn, absences from school -- corroborated by the city's school districts, which provided data to show that 36.2% of all public school students are considered chronically absent, missing at least 10% of the school year.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.