KUALA LUMPUR – Meta Platforms, the parent company of Facebook, is facing accusations that it intentionally crafted its social media platforms to captivate children, while allegedly withholding information on millions of complaints concerning underage users on Instagram.
A recently unsealed legal complaint claims that Meta only disabled a fraction of the reported accounts, according to an Associated Press report, citing articles from The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times.
Originally disclosed in a redacted form, the complaint served as the initial move in a lawsuit filed in late October by the attorneys general of 33 states.
Reports suggest that Meta, in response to the allegations, issued a statement refuting the complaint’s portrayal of its efforts over the past decade to ensure a safe online experience for teenagers and other youths.
The company insisted that its products are not designed to be addictive for younger users.
Meta has not yet provided a comment on the unredacted complaint.
The legal filing refers to internal company documents, allegedly quoting Meta officials who acknowledged engineering their products to exploit psychological vulnerabilities in young users, such as impulsive behavior, susceptibility to peer pressure, and an underestimation of risks.
The documents also purportedly reveal that Facebook and Instagram were popular among children under the age of 13, even though company policy prohibited their use.
A 2019 email from a Facebook safety executive hinted at the potential negative impact on the company’s business if measures were taken to restrict younger users.
However, a year later, the same executive expressed frustration over the lack of enthusiasm within Facebook for identifying and removing younger children from its platforms, despite actively studying the usage patterns of underage users for business purposes.
According to the complaint, Meta reportedly has a backlog of up to 2.5 million accounts of younger children awaiting action at all times, as outlined in the reports.
Recently, The Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) drew attention to the substantial number of young individuals who spend extended periods online, expressing concerns about harmful aspects of specific social media platforms.
Referring to the MCMC’s Internet Users Survey 2022, the commission’s Consumer and Industry Affairs Division senior director Eneng Faridah Iskandar noted that a significant portion of users spending the majority of their day online are youths.
“One of the survey’s findings was that 11.7% of internet users are online for more than 18 hours daily, which is their every waking hour.
“Out of the 11.7% of users, 16% of them are aged 20-years-old and below,” Eneng said when speaking as a panellist at the National Press Club’s (NPC) post-National Journalists’ Day (Hawana 2023) conference in late October. – November 27, 2023