Almost immediately after secretly opening an Instagram account, an 11-year-old girl found sites promoting anorexia, triggering her own eating disorder, according to a recent lawsuit filed in the United States District Court Northern District of California.
In the lawsuit, the Social Media Victims Law Center alleges that Meta Platforms Inc., the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, is responsible for the girl – Alexis Spence – developing an addiction to social media that is expected to have potentially life-long consequences.
“As a result of Alexis’ addiction to Instagram, she had to undergo professional counseling, in-patient programs, out-patient programs, participate in eating disorder programs and will likely require help in the form of a service dog for the rest of her life, as well as ongoing medical attention to ensure she does not digress,” said the suit.
Lawyers from the center also allege that what happened to Spence could happen to others, as the mobile app “knowingly targets tweens and encourages 11-year-olds to open multiple accounts.”
In addition to an eating disorder, Spence also suffered from anxiety and depression due to her experiences with social media, said the suit.
She also had suicidal thoughts and practiced self-harm.
Before she downloaded the app, Spence was “a confident and happy child, who loved reading, writing, and helping people and animals,” who wanted to become a veterinarian.
According to the law center, Spence was able to hide her Instagram from her parents – Kathleen and Jeffery Spence – with another application that disguised it as a calculator app. She would go on to open several accounts, including a school account with no inbox that her attorneys claim prove that Instagram does not verify user information.
“In documents publicly produced for the first time in this lawsuit, Meta references the practice by teen users opening multiple accounts to evade parental authority as a ‘value add proposition,’” the suit claims.
As she navigated her accounts, the Instagram algorithm directed Spence to content that featured what the law center describes as “underweight models,” as well as content about unhealthy eating and eating disorders.
Meta documents confirm that 66% of teen girls who are on Instagram experience negative social comparison, said the suit.
Last year whistleblower Frances Haugen, a former Facebook project manager, shared thousands of redacted company documents with Congress. These documents show that “Instagram purposefully targeted tweens calling them ‘heard animals,’” said Spence’s legal team.
“Meta has consistently and knowingly placed its own profit over the health and welfare of its teen and underage users,” said Matthew P.
Bergman, founding attorney of the Social Media Victims Law Center. “These documents, including some that have not been previously disclosed to the public, show that Meta’s senior leadership knew that Instagram harms kids but consciously and callously chose profits over human life.”
Despite warnings that Meta’s products, such as Instagram, could be harmful to teen users, the company spent millions to research and develop features to attract them, Bergman said.
According to NPR, Haugen previously leaked a Facebook study that found 13.5% of British teen girl participants in a survey said their suicidal thoughts became more frequent after they joined Instagram.
According to NBC News, Instagram spokesperson Liza Crenshaw Instagram declined to comment on the Spence lawsuit, as it is active litigation.
Around the time the Facebook Papers documents were shared, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg addressed the mental health impact of Meta products on young users in a Facebook post.
“When it comes to young people's health or well-being, every negative experience matters,” he said. “It is incredibly sad to think of a young person in a moment of distress who, instead of being comforted, has their experience made worse. We have worked for years on industry-leading efforts to help people in these moments and I'm proud of the work we've done. We constantly use our research to improve this work further.”
Anyone experiencing thoughts of suicide or self-harm can call 911 or the National Suicide Prevention Hotline at 1-800-273-8255.
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