Photo by Ibrahim.ID via Wikimedia Commons. Creative Commons License
Del Norte County is joining Sacramento and San Diego counties in a public nuisance lawsuit against tech giants Meta, Google, TikTok and Snap, alleging that those companies have “knowingly targeted and profited from minors’ excessive and compulsive uses.”
County Counsel Jacqueline Roberts and several private law firms filed the suit in Del Norte County Superior Court on Monday.
In its complaint for damages and demand for a jury trial, Del Norte County is seeking an order deeming the defendants’ alleged conduct a public nuisance under California law and enjoining them from engaging in action that further contributes to the alleged public nuisance.
Del Norte is also seeking relief to pay for preventative education, addiction treatment as well as efforts to abate or mitigate the continuing nuisance. The county is also seeking actual and compensatory damages, punitive damages, statutory damages and attorneys fees.
The lawsuit mentions Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Snapchat. It also briefly mentions X (formerly known as Twitter), though not as a defendant in the suit.
Four members of the Board of Supervisors authorized Roberts to proceed with the public nuisance lawsuit, according to the county counsel who reported from a closed session meeting on Dec. 10.
“The defendants and other particulars will be disclosed to any person upon inquiry once litigation is formally commenced,” Roberts said in December.
District 5 Supervisor Dean Wilson was absent during that meeting.
On Thursday, Roberts said the lawsuit hadn’t been filed when the Board authorized her to participate in the litigation.
“The hope is that there [will be] responsibility taken and maybe some measures put into place so there doesn’t continue to be the issues that we’re seeing with our children, and even with adults in the community, but particularly with our children,” she told Redwood Voice Community News.
Outside law firms participating in the suit include Dallas-based Baron & Budd, Diab Chambers, Wagstaff & Cartmell, Beasley Allen and Goza & Honnold, according to a news release from the Baron & Budd law firm.
Del Norte, San Diego and Sacramento are the only counties taking part in the public nuisance lawsuit, though more may file similar complaints, Baron & Budd attorney John Fiske said via email Wednesday.
In the introduction to its 240-page complaint, Del Norte County alleges that the social media companies that own Facebook, Snapchat, TikTok and YouTube borrow from behavioral and neurobiological techniques “used in slot machines and exploited by the cigarette industry.” They deliberately target youth to drive advertising revenue and know that children and adolescents are vulnerable to “the addictive effects of these features.”
Those harmful features include an “algorithmically-generated endless feed” to keep users scrolling with variable rewards to intensify use and trophies to award extreme use. Metrics and graphics exploit social comparison, according to the complaint. And the tools it offers parents seeking to curb such use “create the illusion of control,” the county states.
“Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Snapchat and YouTue have rewired how students think, learn, feel and behave,” the county’s complaint states. “Disconnected ‘Likes’ have replaced the intimacy of adolescent friendships. Mindless scrolling has displaced the creativity of play and sport. While presented as ‘social,’ defendants’ platforms have in a myriad of ways promoted disconnection, disassociation and a legion of resulting mental and physical harms.”
The lawsuit also alleges that social media’s harvesting of personal data and its ability to “micro-target advertisements” to a narrow audience has led to increased suicide rates and emergency room visits for anxiety disorders.
The county’s complaint cites a Pew Research survey from 2018 that states that the percentage of American adolescents owning a smartphone rose from about 73 percent in 2014-15 to 95 percent in 2018 with about 45 percent of teens saying they’re online almost constantly.
It also cites a 2023 Gallup survey of more than 1,500 adolescents that found that 51 percent of U.S. teenagers spend at least four hours daily on YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, X and other social media apps.
The county’s complaint alleges that “social media use can and does lead to increased mental health issues, including depression” and also cites the 2019 Del Norte Community Health Assessment, which stated that the county has the highest estimated mental health service needs in the state.
“It is a public health issue at this point,” Roberts told Redwood Voice. There are lots of mental health problems that have been connected to it. And it’s not even just mental health — you can look at kids in school and what not and how they’re suffering, basically spending all their time on TikTok. The hope is that there are some changes made and those changes will help the children within Del Norte County.”
San Diego filed its lawsuit on Friday, according to local CBS affiliate, CBS8.
According to Roberts, Baron & Budd is the same firm that represented Del Norte County in national opioid litigation. She said she is confident the firm will ably represent Del Norte in its lawsuit against Facebook, TikTok and other social media companies.
