Wisconsin is set to receive up to $313 million in the settlement of a lawsuit claiming Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, intentionally included features on their social media sites that are addictive to children, according to the Wisconsin Department of Justice.
Currently, Wisconsin is set to receive $219 million with the opportunity to gain up to $313 million more if agreements are met with TikTok and YouTube, according to WisPolitics.
“This resolution provides for several changes that prioritize kids’ well-being over Meta’s profits,” Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul said in a press release.
The lawsuit said the company did not tell the public the entire truth about “the dangers of its Platforms and ignored the risks these Platforms have posed to the mental and physical wellbeing of America’s youth,” alleging that the company violated the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA).
University of Wisconsin-Madison Professor Heather Kirkorian, the director of the Cognitive Development and Media Lab, told The Daily Cardinal the policies, the platforms’ content and parents all play a role in children’s relationships to social media.
She noted the impacts from social media could be positive or negative.
“We tend to think of there being really clear, strong evidence that there are these harms of social media, but in reality, the research is much more mixed,” Kirkorian said.
Kaul said he would use the settlement money to implement statewide programs to help children navigate social media websites — including “crisis intervention services” and “digital literacy counselors,” according to WisPolitics.
Kirkorian said these kinds of programs could help, but those at risk of negative effects from social media usage already have a higher risk for mental health issues from other factors such as systemic bias, family conflict and isolation.
“These kinds of solutions that provide school-level, family-level, community-level interventions for mental health in general are likely to help kids in general and especially help the kids who are most at risk of harm from their technologies,” she said.
In terms of the settlement, Meta must also set up new site policies and safeguards against social media addiction, according to the Wisconsin DOJ. These policies include parental controls, screen time limits and limited access during the night and school hours.
Kirkorian said while safeguards can be important, it is also important platforms are built with those they are meant to protect in mind.
She pointed to the American Academy of Pediatrics’s Center of Excellence on Social Media and Youth Mental Health as an example of a “co-design” of what a healthy digital media landscape can look like.
The Academy worked with teens to create a guide on what they want social media to look like, something that Kirkorian said is usually “absent” in “grown-up spaces of legal matters” discussing social media regulation.
“I hope that any proposed solutions can incorporate the voices of folks on the ground,” Kirkorian said. “So not just parents, but teens and teachers — folks who are really dealing with this on the ground in real time to make sure that things are meeting them where they’re at…not just what folks like me think their needs might be.”
Staff writer
