Mark Zuckerberg now makes a bad face. “He has blood on his hands”, they said a few days ago in the United States Congress to the founder of Facebook and today head of Meta.
The sentence was against him, but it also included the other executive directors of technology companies for the alleged harm they cause to minors doing business with their applications, without paying attention to the mental health of children and adolescents.
Eric Adams, mayor of New York, still carries inside the police captain that he was and decided to follow the trail of blood.
After in January, in his State of the City speech, he declared that a series of applications represented “a public health emergency”, this week he put the response device into action.
“We know these platforms are designed with additive and dangerous features that take advantage of children’s innovative interest in discovery and play,” Adams said in filing a lawsuit against TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat and YouTube.
The mayor accused these platforms of fostering the mental crisis among young New Yorkers. His initiative seeks to curb this contagion and recover the 100 million dollars that the city spends every year because of this crisis. Since they cause damage, at least help overcome them. “The elements that keep these people clicking in these dark corners of social media have fueled an alarming rise in online bullying, depression, eating disorders and suicidal ideation,” he insisted.
This initiative is part of a framework in which other cities and school districts have sued these companies for various matters. New York, however, with the largest school system in the United States, is leading this movement and leading the way.
The announcement of the legal case was marked by a poster with this caption: “Social networks can cause feelings of loneliness, isolation and depression in young people.” Adams and his top collaborators described an even bleaker picture of increased violence and suicide among young people fueled by these apps, along with hours spent surfing them instead of studying or building relationships. with others in person.
“Not only do we need to provide people with tools, knowledge and the power to defend themselves, but we also need to demand change, said Ashwin Vasan, commissioner of the Department of Health of the Consistory of the Big Apple. “And they don’t do that if we ask them kindly”, he clarified to justify the demand, a last resort in the case of requests being omitted. “The goal is for them to put protectors that better protect minors on their platforms,” ??added Vasan.
The companies cited in the lawsuit responded that they have robust safeguards and restrictions – such as parental controls, age-based time limits and capacity usage – built to offer teen users age-appropriate content. , experiences and support for your well-being.
“The allegations in this claim are simply not true,” Google spokesman José Castañeda said in a statement. “TikTok is an industry leader in the protection of teenagers”, said this company. Meta, owner of Facebook and Instagram, responded in a similar vein.
Snapchat partly distanced itself from it and acknowledged that, despite its precautions, there is still work to be done.
The legal salvo also drew immediate backlash from the Partnership for New York City, a nonprofit that represents some of the city’s biggest companies, and Tech:NYC, another nonprofit with ties to tech companies. . “Instead of making a good-faith effort to engage in real issues and solutions, the mayor has created a distraction with this endless demand,” Julie Samuels of Tech:NYC lamented in a statement.
The argument of good faith seems closer to Adams by stressing that social researchers agree that social networks “can cause mental illness in young people in many ways.” The City Council’s demand is supported by extensive documentation that states that “New York is facing a youth mental health crisis”.
Among the data is that in 2021, 38% of New York high school students reported feeling so sad or hopeless that they stopped doing their usual activities. This percentage represents an increase of 27% compared to the 2011 data.
The document clarifies that many things have happened in this decade that may have contributed to the increase in psychological problems, “but we cannot ignore the rise of social networks as a contributor”. He emphasizes that these tools have become a central part of young people’s daily lives, especially after the introduction of smartphones.
There was surprise at the absence of X (formerly Twitter) in the lawsuit. They justified it by the little use that teenagers make of it.
