American pressure group Parents Together Action has penned an open letter to Mark Zuckerberg and Shou Zi Chew demanding a meeting with the pair over the harm the platforms have caused to children.
“We are writing on behalf of 3.5 million ParentsTogether members across the United States, many of whom struggle with the risks and harms your platforms have imposed on unwitting children and families – anxiety and depression, cyberbullying, sexual predators, disordered eating, dangerous challenges, access to drugs, addiction to your platforms, and more – every single day,” said the open letter.
“We are disappointed and horrified by the documents that surfaced during a recent lawsuit filing that shows that you knew! [italics in original]”
The lawsuit in question was filed in California and showed that the big tech companies knew the harms their social media platforms could cause and allegedly chose to do nothing about them.
“No one wakes up thinking they want to maximize the number of times they open Instagram that day,” one Meta employee wrote in 2021, according to the filing. “But that’s exactly what our product teams are trying to do.”
The filing also said that Zuckerberg was personally warned:
“We are not on track to succeed for our core well-being topics (problematic use, bullying & harassment, connections, and SSI), and are at increased regulatory risk and external criticism. These affect everyone, especially Youth and Creators; if not addressed, these will follow us into the Metaverse.”
The documents also showed that TikTok parent ByteDance knew that young people were more susceptible to being lured into trying things they see on the app.
Young people are more likely to “overestimate their ability to cope with risk,” and their “ability to understand the finality of death is also not fully fledged,” according to the filing.
Meta has recently released a variety of tools to help protect children. TikTok has done similar.
Despite that, Parents Together Action pointed to a variety of instances where children have been harmed on the apps.
“A 10-year-old girl accidentally choked to death in her bedroom, just feet away from her mother, because you allowed dangerous challenges like the ‘blackout game’ to spread unimpeded, despite knowing children are extremely susceptible to them,” it wrote.
“You are devastating children and families with your irresponsible decisions. We have stood outside of your company doors with families who have suffered the worst consequences of your platforms, literally begging to be heard. We remain willing and able to bring you together with families who have been devastated by the consequences of your business models,” the group added.
