New York City's enormous efforts to stop the epidemic of events committed by people with mental disorders – on the subway, on the streets, in homes; an unstoppable post-pandemic wave – have found a new way to demonstrate. This Wednesday, the Big Apple filed a complaint against Google's TikTok, Meta, Snap and YouTube “for fueling the national mental health crisis among young people,” announced Mayor Eric Adams.
The lawsuit, filed in California Superior Court by the city of New York, the Department of Education and the New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation, on which strained mental health services depend, alleges that these companies are intentionally manipulating them and creating an addiction among younger users This leads to them staying attentive to their platforms and causing undesirable effects in their behavior, which ultimately harm their personal development and coexistence with their environment.
The charge is based on three counts under New York State law: negligence, gross negligence and disorderly conduct. The plaintiffs are demanding a jury trial, changes in company policy and financial relief. According to the lawsuit, the behavioral disorders allegedly caused by dependence on the aforementioned platforms have resulted in additional financial burden and crisis for the city, impacting schools, hospitals and other communities. In a press conference, Democrat Adams described New York teenagers as constantly distressed and anxious creatures; They are glued to their phones and perform poorly in school. In addition, due to screen addiction, they lose their social skills and guidelines for living together.
Addressing the mental health issues that afflict New York's homeless population to a large extent has been a headache for Mayor Adams since the beginning of his term in office. It has tried in every possible way to avoid increasing police patrols in the subway – an epicenter of the phenomenon that serves as a shelter for many homeless people – or even with the forced confinement of people with clear symptoms of imbalance in institutions Measures to be taken have been heavily criticized by NGOs, experts and groups of relatives of those affected. But targeting tech companies is a first, especially in a city “built on innovation and technology,” Adams said in a statement. However, the city council points out that “many social media platforms ultimately endanger our children’s mental health, promote addiction and encourage unsafe behavior.”
“We are taking bold action on behalf of millions of New Yorkers to hold these companies accountable for their role in this crisis and working to address this public health threat,” a reality made worse by the ravages of the pandemic is particularly severely affected. “This lawsuit and plan of action are part of a broader adjustment that will shape the lives of our young people, our city and our society for years to come.”
However, New York is not the vanguard of the technology industry. In the absence of new federal laws to protect children online, or at least regulations that adapt to the rapid pace of innovation, lawsuits filed by districts to hold companies accountable are becoming more common across the country (School Network and some California districts, among others have already done so months ago), groups of parents who claim their children have been harmed by social networks, and even some prosecutors, such as those from 41 states that jointly indicted Meta in October. One of the arguments on which these demands are based is the express intention of technology companies to specifically create addiction, as the tobacco industry once did by incorporating additives.
“We want teens to have safe, age-appropriate experiences online, and we have more than 30 tools and features to help them and their parents. “We have been working on these issues for a decade, hiring people who are professionally committed to keeping young people safe and secure online,” Meta spokesman Andy Stone said in response to the lawsuit, the terms of which he wrote himself considers it unfounded. “Working with youth, mental health and parenting experts, we have developed services and policies to provide age-appropriate experiences for youth and robust controls for parents.”
“TikTok has industry-leading safeguards to support the well-being of teens, including age-restricted features, parental controls, an automatic 60-minute time limit for users under 18, and other protections,” said a company spokesperson, quoted by Axios portal.
The recent appearance at the Capitol by the heads of tech companies Meta, TikTok, X, Snap and Discord, the latest in a long list, is the most immediate precedent for the New York lawsuit, but not the only one. At the hearing, members of Congress questioned leaders for four hours about children's online safety, but new bills continue to fall by the wayside while lawsuits pose a growing and tangible threat to companies' business models. The social outcry sparked by an investigation that once found Instagram, Meta's social network, to be responsible for harming the mental health of teenagers with impossible models of beauty seems distant. Since then, the commitment to artificial intelligence – a topic that, strangely, was not addressed in the January 31st congressional hearing, since a separate session was already dedicated to it – has reached such a speed that its own momentum has surpassed any attempt at regulation or regulation Overwhelming can protect the offering of platforms for minors and young people.
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