CA Assembly Bill Would Let Parents Sue Social Media Giants

SACRAMENTO, CA — A bill introduced to the state Legislature on Tuesday would allow California parents to sue social media companies for their platforms' addictive effects on children.

The bipartisan Social Media Platform Duty to Children Act, sponsored by Assemblymembers Buffy Wicks (D-Oakland) and Jordan Cunningham (R-San Luis Obispo), would permit individual and class action lawsuits against social media companies with more than $100 million a year in revenue if they “knew or should have known” that their sites were addictive to children.

Parents could sue companies for up to $250,000 per child per year, or $1000 per child per year in a class action suit, in current or retroactive damages.

The bill, which is backed by the University of San Diego School of Law’s Children Advocacy Group, would also establish an “age-appropriate” standard for apps and require social media companies to take steps to avoid addicting child users. Companies that have already done so would be protected from litigation.

Currently, social media companies are largely immune to litigation thanks to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996, which states: “No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.” In practice, the clause protects online companies such as Facebook that republish other content.

“We do this with any product you sell to kids,” Cunningham told the Los Angeles Times. “You have to make sure it’s safe. Some sort of stuffed animal or something that you’re selling to parents that are going to put it in their 5-year-olds’ bed — you can’t have toxic chemicals in it. … We just haven’t done that as a society, yet, when it comes to social media. And I think the time is now to do that.”

Concern over the harmful effects of social media on children has been accumulating for years. Bipartisan criticism intensified in the fall after former Facebook employee Frances Haugen leaked internal company documents showing that the company, now called Meta, was aware of the negative effects that its subsidiary Instagram had on young users’ mental health. Shortly thereafter, Instagram suspended development of a planned “Instagram Kids” app.

The discoveries led to a slew of bills and investigations across the country, according to the Los Angeles Times.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta launched an investigation in early March into the risks TikTok poses to children.

In November, Ohio’s attorney general, Dave Yost, sued Meta, alleging that it misled investors about the effects of its products on children.

In January, a Connecticut mother filed a lawsuit against Meta and Snap for “unreasonably dangerous feature” following her daughter’s suicide.

President Joe Biden even mentioned the topic in his most recent State of the Union address, calling for lawmakers to “hold social media platforms accountable for the national experiment they’re conducting on our children for profit.”

Social media companies have fought back. A Meta representative directed the Los Angeles Times to its rebuttals of Haugen’s testimony and argued that the research on Instagram’s negative effects was part of a broader effort to mitigate those damages. Meta also pointed to its introduction of resources to help people struggling with body image issues and to anti-bullying features.

Cunningham told Politico he anticipated massive backlash from tech companies when the bill goes before the Assembly’s Judiciary Committee in the spring. But, he said, “this is as good a case as I can think of, outside maybe massive oil spills or Joe Camel pitching cigarettes to 15-year-olds, for retroactive application.”

Patch reached out to the Chamber of Progress, a trade group representing tech companies, for comment.