Regarding the $1.4 trillion state infringement claims storm against Meta

States and their plaintiff attorney groups are replicating the advocacy model used against large tobacco companies to launch lawsuits against major tech firms. This week, a federal court will hear a case in which California, Colorado, Kentucky, and New Jersey accuse Meta of misleading the public regarding the harm social media causes to the mental health of teenagers. People should not be deceived into thinking that these lawsuits can help children.

Meta currently faces thousands of lawsuits in state and federal courts, accusing the company of exacerbating the epidemic of mental illness among teenagers. With smartphones and social media ubiquitous, it is an undeniable fact that more young people are experiencing mental health issues. However, large-scale civil tort lawsuits cannot resolve this complex socio-cultural problem.

The true aim of the state attorneys general and plaintiff lawyers is to exert pressure on Meta through a barrage of lawsuits, forcing the company to reach a massive settlement, replicating the outcome of tobacco companies in the late 1990s. Just as Meta is about to compete in the field of artificial intelligence with OpenAI, Anthropic, and open-source large models, these lawsuits bring a costly additional burden and distract the company's focus.

This spring, a federal jury found Meta and YouTube responsible for the deterioration of a young woman's mental state, ordering them to pay $6 million in damages. Meta is appealing this ruling, but thousands of similar claims are following. In May of this year, Meta reached a settlement of $9 million with a small school district in Kentucky.

This month, a judge in New Mexico ordered Meta to pay $567 million to address the so-called public nuisance caused by its platform. Earlier in the spring, a New Mexico jury had already fined Meta $375 million for misleading users about platform safety. Additionally, over 40 state attorneys general have filed similar lawsuits.

In a landmark trial that began this week in Oakland, California, the four states are seeking $1.4 trillion in damages—indeed in trillions. This amount is nearly equivalent to Meta's $1.5 trillion market value. California Attorney General Rob Bonta stated that the four states accuse Meta of designing Facebook and Instagram with the intention of "maximizing profits," incorporating various "harmful features" that lead to addiction among children and teenagers, causing serious harm to their physical and mental well-being, while deliberately concealing the existence and severity of these risks from the public.

The states have filed lawsuits based on their common consumer protection laws and laws against unfair business practices, thus not needing to prove that Meta caused actual harm to specific individuals. The attorneys general instead cite public statements from Meta executives: the company claims to prioritize the safety of teenagers, but this contradicts the platform's product features that encourage teenagers to endlessly scroll through feeds Meta argues that the company has implemented several measures to protect young people from malicious individuals, such as restricting adults from sending private messages. The platform has also launched a reminder feature that prompts users to take breaks when teenagers spend too much time scrolling through content, and it allows users to set their own daily usage limits.

In response, the state attorneys general counter that these tools only create a false sense of safety and do not curb addictive usage behaviors. Indeed, Meta could do more to further limit teenagers' platform usage time. However, a frustrating reality is that even so, these teenagers are likely to turn to other apps or video games.

The states also accuse Meta of enabling users to register multiple Instagram accounts, constituting unfair business practices. The states argue that multiple accounts allow children to bypass parental controls and evade the "no accounts for those under 13" rule. Meta does ban accounts suspected of being registered by minors, but the attorneys general claim that once one account is banned, minors can switch to other accounts to continue using the platform.

The attorneys general also assert that Meta violates the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998, arguing that the platform has failed to adequately intercept underage users who misreport their age. However, for many years, Congress has been discussing whether and how to mandate platforms to verify user ages, which is also a major sticking point in the new child online safety legislation.

The state attorneys general are attempting to punish Meta for certain measures, but even Congress and the states themselves have yet to reach a consensus on these measures. In recent years, some states have enacted laws to address the issue of excessive social media use among teenagers, including banning smartphones in schools and requiring parental consent for minors to register accounts.

Such laws may have some positive effects. However, the legal attacks against Meta merely allow politicians to pretend they are protecting children while litigation lawyers profit immensely from it. This is simply using the issue of children to gain political advantage