Meta, TikTok Could Face Civil Liability for Addicting Children in California
Social-media platforms are lobbying to stop first-in-the-nation proposal allowing government attorneys to sue them for features alleged to harm minors
SACRAMENTO, Calif.—Social-media companies such as Facebook parent Meta Platforms Inc. META -5.20%▼ could be sued by government attorneys in California for features that allegedly harm children through addiction under a first-in-the-nation bill that cleared a crucial vote in the state Senate late Tuesday.
The measure would permit the state attorney general, local district attorneys and the city attorneys of California’s four largest cities to sue social-media companies including Meta—which also owns Instagram—as well as TikTok, owned by Chinese company ByteDance Ltd., and Snap Inc. SNAP -5.70%▼ under the state’s law governing unfair business practices. The bill would allow lawsuits if a prosecutor believes a company employed features it knew or should have known would addict minors.
The bill passed in California’s Senate Judiciary Committee by a vote of 8-0. Youth advocates, teacher’s unions and consumer groups spoke in support of the bill during a hearing earlier in the day.
Activist Larissa May told lawmakers that at one point during college, she was spending more than 14 hours a day in one social media app.
“I was addicted to the place that was killing me, that was reminding me of who I would never become, what I would never look,” she said. “There needs to be some accountability. The more that we suffer, the more money that they make.”
Dylan Hoffman, executive director for California and the Southwest at the industry group Technet, testified that the measure would violate free speech rights because algorithms used to curate content on social media platforms are a protected form of speech.
In a version of the bill that passed the state Assembly in May, parents would have been able to sue the companies for harm to their children, with a minimum $1,000 payout for a claimant in class-action lawsuits. Addiction was defined as the use of social media that is difficult to reduce despite a desire to do so and that causes physical, mental, emotional, developmental or material harms.
But after lobbying from business and tech-industry groups, the chairman of the state Senate Judiciary Committee and the bill’s author agreed this past weekend to amend the bill so that only government attorneys can file the suits.
Tech companies would still face civil penalties of up to $25,000 for a violation or $250,000 if they are shown to have knowingly employed harmful features. A provision that would have allowed retroactive lawsuits was removed.
The measure will now head to the state Senate Appropriations Committee and, if it advances, to the full Senate, where it must be approved before the end of the legislative session in August. Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom hasn’t taken a public position.
In an interview before the changes made over the weekend, Mr. Hoffman said the bill would potentially open companies to hundreds of millions of dollars in liability and prompt them to abandon the youth market nationwide.
“How do you geofence this just to California? We’re talking about websites and platforms that aren’t only across all of the states, but across all of the world,” he said.
Mr. Hoffman said Technet members would prefer to work with legislators on a separate bill regulating design features for children, which also passed the Judiciary Committee Tuesday.
Mr. Hoffman said Technet is still evaluating the proposed amendments and declined to comment on how they might affect the group’s view of the bill.
Representatives for Snap, Twitter Inc. and ByteDance declined to comment on the bill. A Meta representative said the measure would do nothing to encourage companies to make meaningful changes.
Internet-privacy advocates including the Electronic Frontier Foundation have also opposed the legislation, saying it could blur the line between product liability and freedom of speech.
Assemblyman Jordan Cunningham, a Republican who authored the legislation, said it is needed because social-media companies try to maximize children’s time on their platforms despite negative mental-health consequences.
“I don’t care if at the end of the day, nobody gets sued,” he said. “I just want to create the financial incentives for them to stop using features that are harming children.”
Reporting by The Wall Street Journal last year and congressional hearings that followed revealed internal research from Facebook suggesting the company knew its algorithms were harming children by contributing to mental-health issues, particularly among teen girls. Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg has said the hearings painted a false picture of Meta, and company representatives have said the research on the harms of social-media use is inconclusive.
California’s proposal is the latest example of state lawmakers’ attempts to regulate social-media companies as federal legislation remains stalled. A bill that died in the Minnesota Legislature this year would have banned the use of social-media algorithms on children.
Despite a flurry of one-on-one meetings with California state legislators last month, tech lobbyists were unable to stop the bill from passing on a bipartisan 51-0 vote in the state Assembly. About two dozen Assembly members abstained.
Meta, Twitter and Snap have individually lobbied against the California measure, according to state lobbying disclosures. Meta has taken a lead role in pressuring lawmakers to oppose the legislation, according to several people who work in the legislature.
Meta says it has tightened age-verification protocols on Instagram, provided “nudges” that prompt teens away from certain topics if they have been scrolling through for a significant time, and it now allows parents to block children’s access to the app during certain times of day.
“We want to make sure that the people on our platforms have a safe and positive experience,” said Jennifer Hanley, Meta’s North American head of safety.