Just over 70 lawsuits have been filed in the United States, against social media firms such as Snapchat, TikTok, and Meta (Facebook), claiming that their algorithms are designed to “hook” their children onto their platform, and it’s causing real-world harm to them.
A Bloomberg report claims that a nine-year-old boy had binge-watched YouTube videos for several days of the week before he’d spend the rest of his evening scrolling on TikTok and Snapchat, where he ended up sharing a nude photo with a stranger that circulated the photo to others.
Teenager Channing Smith of Tennessee died by suicide after a classmate posted private, explicit messages between him and another boy on Instagram and Snapchat, outing him as bisexual, said his family, who is calling for an investigation into the “social media bullying. pic.twitter.com/iHIXOOyPl9
— Dax Gigandet (@DaxGigandet) November 22, 2020
Of the dozens of lawsuits, one parent claimed their 16-year-old daughter from Utah became so conscious of her looks that she developed bulimia because she wanted to look like the women she follows on Instagram, while an 11-year-old girl from Connecticut committed suicide after developing severe sleep deprivation from her addiction to Instagram and Snapchat.
The lawsuits are mainly focused on bringing a change to how the algorithms accumulate content for the intended consumer under Section 230.
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