DOYLESTOWN, Pa. (KYW Newsradio) — Bucks County officials are suing five social media platforms, accusing them of exploiting addictive behaviors intentionally to get kids hooked on their apps and creating a mental health epidemic.
The suit, filed in California, names Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube and TikTok.
County Solicitor Joe Khan says the suit focuses on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, and YouTube, laying out in a 109-page complaint why the companies should pay damages for targeting children and teens and causing significant mental health issues.
“What the lawsuit alleges is that the algorithms that these companies have been using are not accidentally getting kids addicted, they're purposely getting children addicted to use the product,” Khan said, “and they're doing that in very insidious ways.”
Khan says that strategy is not a bug, it’s a feature, and it’s central to the companies’ business models.
Bucks County DA Matt Weintraub said the defendants have misled the public to disastrous effect.
“The defendants have expressly spoken falsely in the public domain about the positive effects of their platforms on youth users — even though we know and we see every day, that that is not the case,” Weintraub said.
The complaint cites numerous statistics, including a 60% increase nationwide, from 2007 to 2019, of adolescents reporting a major depressive episode.
Bucks County Commissioner Gene DiGirolamo says parents are responsible for what their children consume online, but he says platforms like Snapchat purposely make it difficult if not impossible for parents to exercise that control.
“They have taken steps to delete the communications before parents can even look at it. Now, why are they doing that? Because they know they’d get in trouble if they didn't.”
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Bucks officials say they believe they’re the first county government to pursue such a case. Commissioner Bob Harvie says the lawsuit is similar to others filed against tobacco and opioid manufacturers.
“We have a right to demand that they'd be better. We have a right to know that us using them isn't contributing to the mental health problems,” Harvie said.
KYW Newsradio reached out to the companies named in the suit. A Google spokesman said YouTube provides parents with the ability to set reminders, limit screen time and block specific types of content on supervised devices. Snapchat and Meta, the company behind Instagram and Facebook, have not responded.