“Meta Platforms, Inc.'s social-media services cause harm to children.”

Kids under 18 will soon see a host of changes to their Instagram and Facebook experiences thanks to a historic$18 billion settlement Meta Platforms reached Wednesday with 48 U.S. states. … Besides the money, which will be paid out over a decade, Meta has agreed to strengthen its age estimates to keep kids under 13 off its platforms and teens in age-appropriate accounts, enact a hard limit of two hours a day for users under 18, block kids from the apps from midnight to 6 a.m., and hide “like” counts, among other changes.

In a landmark ruling against Meta, a New Mexico judge likened the company’s social media platforms to factories. The psychological harm to children who use Facebook and Instagram, he said, can be seen as their pollution.

A New Mexico judge has ruled that Meta helped fuel the state's youth mental health crisis through the design of Facebook and Instagram, finding the company created a public nuisance and ordering it to pay $567 million for treatment and prevention programs. … The judge said those features contributed to higher rates of depression, anxiety, self-harm, eating disorders and suicide risk among young people.

During his second day of testimony, Arturo Béjar said Meta consistently prioritized profits over safety in designing its products, focusing on how often and for how long people used them, even if it was detrimental to their mental well-being.

The new penalty is in addition to the$375 million in civil penalties that jurors ordered against Meta in March after determining the company knowingly harmed children’s mental health and concealed what it knew about child sexual exploitation on its platforms.

A US judge in New Mexico has ordered Meta to pay another $567m (£421m) for its failure to warn the public about dangers its platforms posed to children, marking the largest fine against the company over child safety. … Judge Biedscheid compared Meta to a factory, with advertising and content as its product and "the psychological harm and sexual exploitation of children to be the pollution that must be abated".

The states accuse the social media giant of intentionally designing its platforms to addict younger users and hiding what it knew about the harmful effects on their mental health, claims Meta has consistently denied.

A US jury has ruled that deliberately addictive features of apps owned by Meta and Google harmed a young user’s mental health. … The ruling, by the California Superior Court of Los Angeles, found that the platforms were deliberately designed in ways that contributed to the anxiety, depression, and body dysmorphia of the plaintiff KGM, as she is referred to in court documents, now a 20 year old woman.

Instagram has been running paid adverts promoting child sexual abuse material in India, a BBC Eye investigation has found.

The psychological harm to children who use the company’s Facebook and Instagram platforms, he said, can be seen as their pollution. … The new financial penalty is in addition to the $375 million in civil penalties that jurors ordered against Meta in March after determining the company knowingly harmed children’s mental health and concealed what it knew about child sexual exploitation on its platforms.

Moreover, Meta seems to have disregarded readily available scientific evidence indicating that younger children are more vulnerable to potential harms caused by services like Facebook and Instagram.

At her home in western Germany, a woman told a team of visiting researchers from Meta that she did not allow her sons to interact with strangers on the social media giant’s virtual reality headsets. Then her teenage son interjected, according to two of the researchers: He frequently encountered strangers, and adults had sexually propositioned his little brother, who was younger than 10, numerous times.

The verdict marks the first time a jury has ruled on such claims against Meta, as the company faces a wave of lawsuits over how its platforms affect young people's mental health. … Separately, Meta is facing thousands of lawsuits accusing it and other social media companies of intentionally designing their products to be addictive to young people, leading to a nationwide mental health crisis. … The state also accused Meta of designing its platforms to maximise engagement despite evidence they were harming children's mental health.

Two former Meta safety researchers told a US Senate committee on Tuesday that the social media giant covered up potential harms to children stemming from its virtual reality (VR) products. … In 2021, Frances Haugen who once worked as a product manager on the company's civic integrity team, said Instagram was impacting the mental health of teenagers but did not share its own findings suggesting that the platform was a "toxic" place for many youngsters. … At a Senate hearing last year, after being prodding by Senator Hawley, Mr Zuckerberg apologised to families who claimed their loved ones had been harmed by the company's products.

A jury in Santa Fe on Tuesday ordered Meta to pay $375 million in civil penalties after finding the company misled consumers about the safety of its platforms and endangered children. … “Meta executives knew their products harmed children, disregarded warnings from their own employees, and lied to the public about what they knew,” Torrez said in a statement following the verdict.

A group of researchers, led by former Meta employee Arturo Béjar, who has previously denounced the company’s practices, analyzed 47 of these features: 30 don’t work, no longer exist, or are very easy to circumvent, and another nine have limitations. Only eight work as intended. The report is titled Teen Accounts, Broken Promises. … The worst-performing category for Instagram is sensitive content, where all features received negative ratings: it’s too easy for young people to view violent and sexual content (drawings and descriptions), and videos promoting self-harm or radical diets.

Meta is once again on trial over dangers its platforms may pose to children. It is once again arguing that it works tirelessly to keep them safe.

According to their claims, Meta changed its policies around researching sensitive topics — like politics, children, gender, race, and harassment — six weeks after whistleblower Frances Haugen leaked internal documents that showed how Meta’s own research found that Instagram can damage teen girls’ mental health.

For years, employees acknowledged a problem with potential child groomers, but prioritized growth over fixes.

Meta shut down internal research into the mental health effects of Facebook and Instagram after finding causal evidence that its products harmed users’ mental health, according to unredacted filings in a class action by U.S. school districts against Meta and other social media platforms. … To the company’s disappointment, “people who stopped using Facebook for a week reported lower feelings of depression, anxiety, loneliness and social comparison,” internal documents said. … “The Nielsen study does show causal impact on social comparison,” an unnamed staff researcher allegedly wrote.

Meta Platforms (META.O), opens new tab will pay up to $18 billion over the next decade and strictly limit how teenagers use Facebook and Instagram under an agreement with nearly all U.S. states to resolve claims it designed those social media platforms to addict children. … The settlements announced on Wednesday end a federal trial over allegations Meta's products harmed children and the company misled the public about their safety.

A top Meta researcher warned the company’s executives that there could be as many as 500,000 cases of online sexual exploitation per day on Facebook and Instagram, according to explosive documents that were unsealed on the eve of a landmark jury trial. … Opening arguments begin Monday in New Mexico Attorney General Raul Torrez’s case in state court, which accuses Mark Zuckerberg’s social media giant of exposing kids to the “twin dangers of sexual exploitation and mental health harm” through creepy messages, “sextortion” schemes and human trafficking.

Meta Platforms' (META.O), opens new tab social media sites Facebook and Instagram will be investigated for potential breaches of EU online content rules relating to child safety, EU regulators said on Thursday, a move that could lead to hefty fines. … The European Commission said it had decided to open an in-depth investigation into Facebook and Instagram due to concerns they had not adequately addressed risks to children.

The investigation focuses on the design of Facebook's and Instagram's online interfaces, which could “exploit the weaknesses and inexperience of minors and cause addictive behaviour”, the Commission said. … “We have concerns that Facebook and Instagram may stimulate behavioural addiction and that the methods of age verification that Meta has put in place on their services is not adequate and will now carry on an in-depth investigation. We want to protect young people’s mental and physical health,” Margrethe Vestager, the European Commissioner for the Digital Age said.

Two thirds (64%) of safety tools tested found to be ineffective with just 17% working as described by Meta – leaving children at risk of harmful content and abuse … Users of Teen Accounts able to view content that promotes suicide, self-harm and eating disorders, with autocomplete suggestions actively recommending search terms and accounts related to suicide, self-harm, eating disorders and illegal substances. … Instagram’s algorithm incentivises children under-13 to perform risky sexualised behaviours for likes and views and encourages them to post content that received highly sexualised comments from adults.

We recognise that no system is perfect and that determined criminals will continue to try to exploit our platform, including through our advertising systems.

Our comprehensive review of Meta’s Teen Accounts finds that there is a substantial gap between the protections promised in the company’s public relations e orts and the actual protections a orded to teens. … Our research demonstrates that teens using Teen Accounts are still the recipients of inappropriate contact and conduct; are encouraged to connect with strangers; and lack tools to e ectively manage how they spend their time or to curb compulsive use. In addition, we found that young children who shouldn’t be allowed on the platform are encouraged to post content that others view as sexualized.

At Molly’s inquest, the Senior Coroner found that exposure to harmful content on social media played a ‘more than minimal’ contributory role in her death.1 Molly’s inquest marked the first time that social media platforms have been held directly responsible for the death of a child.

These documents are directly relevant to a sweeping multidistrict litigation (MDL) in California. That massive case consolidates claims from dozens of state attorneys general and hundreds of private civil lawsuits from teens, parents, and school districts.

The BEEF survey’s findings also show how Instagram can be harmful to kids’ mental health. … According to the Attorneys’ General complaint, researchers at Meta have raised fears that its products are damaging to users’ mental health, especially teenage girls. … In another presentation quoted by the complaint, Meta’s researchers concluded that these negative social comparisons “[c]an cause or exacerbate a number of issues,” including “body image, eating disorders, anxiety, loneliness, depression, envy, online aggression, [and] passive use.”

Accountable Tech and Design It For Us today released new research that found Meta recommends dangerous, body-shaming, and sexually explicit content to users ages 18 and under via their Instagram Teen Accounts, in a direct violation of the company’s promise to protect young users. … “This is about a product that’s designed in a way that undermines their mental health. Young people deserve positive digital spaces that support our well-being, not algorithms that bombard us with harmful content that can trigger anxiety or body image issues.

In 2023, 42 U.S. state Attorneys General sued Meta for allegedly designing its apps that harm children’s health and safety. … According to the Attorneys’ General complaint, researchers at Meta have raised fears that its products are damaging to users’ mental health, especially teenage girls. … In another presentation quoted by the complaint, Meta’s researchers concluded that these negative social comparisons “[c]an cause or exacerbate a number of issues,” including “body image, eating disorders, anxiety, loneliness, depression, envy, online aggression, [and] passive use.”

In the US, that means passing new legislation like the Kids Online Safety Act, which would require social media companies to prevent and mitigate the harms to young people caused by platform design. … But children are not safe on Instagram. … Our testing reveals that the claims are untrue and the purported safety features are substantially illusory.

Moreover, my analysis shows the impact of various retention polices Meta has used, where Meta held the data of hundreds of thousands of accounts that were disabled for being underage for six months to a year before the deletion process was initiated.

Child sexual abuse material can appear online from different sources. This might include content showing sexual harassment, sexual images or harmful behavior towards children.

We do not allow content that endangers children, such as content that contains nudity or physical abuse or content that sexually exploits children on Facebook and Instagram.

At Meta, child protection is always a top priority. … We've developed a three-pronged, industry-leading approach to protecting young people online. First, we focus on preventing harm from happening in the first place.

At Meta, we know that one of our most important responsibilities is to keep young people safe online. We use industry-leading tools to fight child sexual exploitation, and we immediately report violating content to NCMEC (National Center for Missing & Exploited Children).

At Meta, we support parents and caregivers with policies, resources and tools that help protect the safety and well-being of young people online.

At Meta, we know that one of our most important responsibilities is to keep young people safe online. … We take a three-pronged approach to child protection: prevent, control and respond.

Between January 1, 2024 and December 31, 2024, we actioned around 1.5 million pieces of media constituting CSAM that were detected using our media matching technology, in private message threads on Messenger and Instagram Direct which included an EU user.