By Diana Novak Jones
July 20 (Reuters) - Meta Platforms faces trial in Tennessee on Monday over the state's claims that Instagram's design is to blame for a youth mental-health crisis, one of several trials in the coming weeks testing allegations that the company's social media platforms were intentionally built to be addictive.
Tennessee accuses the company of violating the state's consumer protection law by knowingly designing a product that drives teens to compulsive use and misleading the public
about its safety.
The lawsuit, filed by Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti's office, claims Meta failed to disclose extensive internal research showing Instagram could harm teens and continued offering features it knew were dangerous without warning users.
The state alleges founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg was repeatedly warned by some Meta employees about research that found a negative impact on teens, but declined to fund efforts to minimize those harms and made misleading public statements about the amount of harmful content on the platforms.
Skrmetti is seeking financial penalties and a court order directing Instagram to modify aspects of the platform that the state says are harmful to teens' mental health. The case focuses on features like autoplay, Instagram's Reels videos, notifications and designs that cause content to disappear after a certain period.
A Meta spokesperson said in a statement on Friday that the company already has built-in controls to protect the hundreds of thousands of Tennessee teens who use social media every day.
"We want them to do that in a protected space, which is why we’ve spent a decade building safe, age-appropriate defaults for teens alongside simple tools for parents to set the right boundaries for their family," the spokesperson said.
The company has argued the state's claims of harm are based on the content posted on Instagram by its users, and that a federal law, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, shields the company from liability for third-party content.
OVERLAPPING TRIALS
Jury selection will begin in Nashville on Monday for the first phase of the trial. The jury will decide whether Meta violated Tennessee law. If the jury finds it did, the case will move to a second phase where the judge will weigh monetary penalties and potential changes to Instagram. Tennessee’s consumer protection law levies a fine of up to $1,000 per violation.
The trial, which is slated to last for seven weeks, is scheduled to overlap with at least two other trials against the company in courts in California as it faces thousands of lawsuits over similar claims in both state and federal court.
Nearly every state in the country has filed claims against Meta over its platforms’ alleged impact on children. A trial over claims against Meta brought by 29 states alleging the company violated federal law protecting data collected from children and additional state law claims from California, Colorado, Kentucky and New Jersey is scheduled to begin on August 18 in federal court in California.
Separately, Meta and other social media companies are facing thousands of lawsuits brought by individuals and school districts in both state and federal court.
A trial against Meta and Snapchat parent Snap Inc over the claims brought by a 15-year-old boy from Florida known as R.K.C., who alleges that social media damaged his mental health, is scheduled to begin on July 27.
The companies have broadly denied the allegations in these lawsuits, arguing they have sought to protect children and should not be liable for claims they say are based on content posted by their users.
SECOND STATE TRIAL
Tennessee’s trial is the second to test claims in a lawsuit brought by a state against Meta.
New Mexico’s lawsuit against the company went to trial earlier this year, and a jury found the company had misled consumers about the safety of its Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp platforms. The jury awarded the state $375 million in damages.
The judge held a separate bench trial over New Mexico’s claim the company had created a public nuisance, and is currently weighing whether to order the company to make changes and direct it to pay additional damages to repair the harms.
(Reporting by Diana Novak Jones in Chicago, Editing by Alexia Garamfalvi and Matthew Lewis)
