Recent York City Mayor Eric Adams said on Wednesday that his administration has filed a lawsuit against social media firms including Meta Platforms’ Facebook and Instagram for fueling mental health crisis among the many youth.
The lawsuit, filed within the California Superior Court, also includes Alphabet’s YouTube, Snap’s Snapchat and ByteDance’s TikTok and alleges that the businesses intentionally designed their platforms to “purposefully manipulate and addict children and teenagers to social media applications.”
![Mayor Eric Adams](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/02/new-york-city-mayor-eric-76534815.jpg?w=1024)
Meta, TikTok and YouTube already face a whole lot of lawsuits filed on behalf of youngsters and college districts over the addictiveness of social media.
“Over the past decade, now we have seen just how addictive and overwhelming the web world will be, exposing our kids to a non-stop stream of harmful content and fueling our national youth mental health crisis,” Adams said in a press release.
Social media firms have come under intense scrutiny as regulators push them to guard children from harmful content.
![Stock photo of teens looking at smartphones](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/02/75097305.jpg?w=1024)
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg last month apologized to families at a Senate hearing in regards to the impact that social media has on children.
A Meta spokesperson said the corporate wanted teens to have “secure, age-appropriate experiences online,” while TikTok said it’ll proceed to work to maintain the community secure by tackling industry-wide challenges.
“We’ve built services and policies to present young people age-appropriate experiences, and oldsters robust controls. The allegations on this criticism are simply not true,” Google’s spokesperson Jose Castaneda said in a press release.