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Meta Platforms must face a lawsuit by the Massachusetts attorney general alleging that as the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, it deliberately designed social media features to addict young users, the state’s top court ruled on Friday.
The ruling by the Massachusetts supreme judicial court marked the first time a state high court has considered whether a federal law that generally shields internet companies from lawsuits over content posted by their users would also bar claims that companies like Meta knowingly addicted young users.
Writing for the unanimous court, Justice Dalila Argaez Wendlandt said the lawsuit brought by the attorney general, Andrea Campbell, does not seek to hold Meta liable for content created by its users, which section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 generally shields companies from, but targets the company’s conduct.
“Instead, the claims allege harm stemming from Meta’s own conduct either by designing a social media platform that capitalizes on the developmental vulnerabilities of children or by affirmatively misleading consumers about the safety of the Instagram platform,” Wendlandt wrote.
Meta has denied the allegations and said the company takes extensive steps to keep teens and young users safe on its platforms.
Campbell, a Democrat, hailed the ruling in a statement, calling it a “major step in holding these companies accountable for practices that have fueled the youth mental health crisis and put profits over kids”.
Spokespeople for Meta did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Friday’s decision came in the wake of a landmark trial in which a Los Angeles jury on 25 March found Meta and Alphabet’s Google negligent for designing social media platforms that are harmful to young people.
It awarded a combined $6m to a 20-year-old woman who said she became addicted to social media as a child. A separate jury a day earlier found Meta owed $375m in civil penalties in a lawsuit by New Mexico’s attorney general accusing the company of misleading users about the safety of Facebook and Instagram and of enabling child sexual exploitation on those platforms.
Thirty-four other states are pursuing similar cases against Meta in federal court. The Massachusetts case is one of at least nine that state attorneys general have since 2023 pursued in state court, including one filed on Wednesday by Iowa’s attorney general, Brenna Bird, a Republican.
Campbell’s lawsuit garnered early headlines because of allegations it first aired about how Meta’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, had been dismissive of concerns that aspects of Instagram could have a harmful effect on its users.
The lawsuit alleged that features on Instagram such as push notifications, “likes” of user posts and a never-ending scroll were designed to profit from teens’ psychological vulnerabilities and their “fear of missing out” on social news and contacts.
The state alleged that internal data showed the platform was addicting and harming children, yet top executives rejected changes its research showed would improve teens’ wellbeing.
California-based Meta had sought to duck the Massachusetts case based on section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996.
The state argued section 230 does not apply to false statements it said Meta made about the safety of Instagram, its efforts to protect young users’ wellbeing or its age-verification systems to ensure people under 13 stay off the platform. A trial court judge agreed and said the law also did not apply to allegations concerning the negative impacts of Instagram’s design features because the state was “principally seeking to hold Meta liable for its own business conduct”, not third parties’ content.
Meanwhile, Meta said on Thursday it is pulling ads from Facebook and Instagram aimed at recruiting new plaintiffs for ongoing litigation accusing it and other social media companies of designing their platforms to be addictive to young users.
Meta spokesperson Andy Stone said the company was actively defending itself against the lawsuits, which include thousands of cases in both state and federal courts in California, and is removing the ads.
“We will not allow trial lawyers to profit from our platforms while simultaneously claiming they are harmful,” Stone said in a statement.
More than 3,300 lawsuits involving addiction claims are pending in California state court against Meta, Google, Snapchat parent Snap Inc and ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company.
Another 2,400 lawsuits brought by individuals, municipalities, states and school districts have been centralized in California federal court, according to court records.
The companies have denied the allegations and say they take extensive steps to keep teens and young users safe on their platforms.
