Meta, formerly known as Facebook, Inc., is being sued by a bipartisan group of 42 attorneys general who allege that algorithms and notifications on its social media platforms are addictive and have contributed significantly to the crisis of mental health of our country’s youth. . Thirty-three of the attorneys general filed a federal suit against Meta in the Northern District of California, and the other nine filed it in their respective states.
This bipartisan alliance includes western blue states, with California and Washington on board, and extends to southern red states, including Louisiana, South Carolina and Tennessee. Although few teens are on Facebook, which has primarily become the social media domain of Gen negative on the mental state of children. AGs claim that children who constantly search for likes and eagerly wait for post updates lead them to compare themselves negatively to their peers.
The Meta lawsuit was dropped in late October, and in April, the McKinsey Health Institute released a report titled “The Mental Health of Generation Z: The Impact of Technology and Social Media.” The younger cohort of Generation Z, those born between the early 2000s and 2012, are a priority for prosecutors pursuing Meta.
The MHI study is large, with a sample size of 42,000, and it includes not only Generation Z in the United States, but also young people from 25 countries on every continent. The survey also represented Baby Boomers, Millennials and Generation X on their assessments of their mental, social, physical and spiritual health. It’s no surprise that many Gen Zers report their health as “poor” in these categories. Gen Z and Millennials are the generations who agreed that “social media affects their mental health,” and Gen Z led all social media usage categories for “frequency of checking in” and the “posting frequency” “several times a day”. Registration and posting frequencies are the main concerns of the US AGs who argue that Meta deliberately designed the Facebook and Instagram platforms to keep children hooked on their products.
The legal battle that Meta currently finds himself in has been a stimulating topic of discussion for my students in my first English composition classes on the Lima campus of The Ohio State University. Their final short essay topic for this semester centers on their perspective on their generation and the influence of technology and communication.
Since they are Gen Z, I like to think of them as resident social media experts because they grew up with it. When we discussed the attorneys general’s allegations against Meta, I pointed out to my students that the bipartisan coalition uniting red and blue states in their attempts to protect children made this trial particularly intriguing. Many of my students write their essays from an argumentative perspective and will defend their positions on whether the government should restrict the age at which children can access social media. Some of my students are considering sharing a personal story in their journals about how Instagram has affected their view of body image since they were preteens.
While I look forward to reading my students’ papers, I have also been thinking a lot about the MHI survey results regarding my generation, Generation X. Many would think that my age group in the study, those between 41 and 56, would be able to ignore the lures of social media, but the results showed that Generation X was active on the apps and also reported poor mental health. I reduced my time on social media, knowing that what floods my mind affects my emotional well-being. I make a determined effort to, as Philippians 4:8 encourages, think about things that are true, honest, righteous, pure, lovely, and of good report, those things that are God’s praiseworthy blessings in my life.
I learned and saw that social media is often very toxic for young people. An effective way to combat this would be for Gen X parents to help their Gen Z children focus on positive things, and for those seeking good spiritual health, to inspire the pursuit of divine things. Government legislation may eventually succeed in forcing Meta to change the way it does business, but legislation cannot invigorate the change in perspective our young people need to break away from habit-forming algorithms.
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