US wave of lawsuits against social networks over harmed children

Parents have sued Meta, Snapchat, Tiktok & YouTube, alleging their services harmed children. Now class action lawyers are bringing schools into the mix.

An enormous wave of lawsuits against operators of major social networks is piling up in the U.S. Federal District Court for Northern California. 

Defendants are generally Meta Platforms, which operates Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp, Snapchat operator Snap, Tiktok and its owner Bytedance, and YouTube along with Google. 

Legally, different accusations are being made, but they have one thing in common: The social networks are to blame for the suffering of children and their environment.

The Wall Street Journal draws attention to the wave of lawsuits. According to the report, hundreds of parents initially filed lawsuits. 

In particular, they accuse the data companies of inadequate product design: Certain features of social networks or their overall design would have harmed their children. 

Among the cases are indeed terrible fates, including an anorexic girl, a teenager who shot himself, or two who died in a car accident.

The operators of the social networks are at least partly to blame for this, according to the plaintiffs: the anorexic girl had already gained access to Instagram before reaching 

the minimum age, where the algorithm can indeed very quickly lead to absurd anorexia-glorifying content. The teen played Russian roulette for Snapchat videos and lost. 

The fatal car accident was allegedly instigated by a feature - since removed - of the Snapchat app that displayed the current speed being driven in videos.

Lawyers on publicity tour

Meanwhile, hundreds of school administrators across the country have also gotten a taste for it. It's no coincidence that lawyers specializing in class action lawsuits are on a publicity tour. 

Leading the way is a successful wave of more than 5,000 lawsuits against vaping supplier Juul, which has since agreed to pay local governments as well as school administrators a total of $1.7 billion. 

Source: www.heise.de