The Mayor of New York City stated that his administration filed a lawsuit against the parent companies of TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, and YouTube. The lawsuit accused these companies of damaging the mental health of young adults and children. In particular, the plaintiffs who sued these companies were the school district and the health organizations.

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The suit alleges that Meta, Snap ByteDance, and Google (whose parent company is Alphabet) knowingly,

designed, developed, produced, operated, promoted, distributed, and marketed their platforms to attract, capture, and addict youth, with minimal parental oversight.

Furthermore, multiple school districts and individuals claim the companies’ products “are defective because they are designed to maximize screen time” and that they have resulted in various emotional and physical harms, including death.”

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However, a TikTok spokesperson said in a statement that the company has “industry-leading safeguards” for teens, including parental controls and features for age restrictions.

“Providing young people with a safer, healthier experience online has always been core to our work,” Google said. Meta said it’s “spent a decade working on these issues” and wants “teens to have safe, age-appropriate experiences online, and we have over 30 tools and features to support them and their parents.”

A Snap spokesperson said that “Snapchat was intentionally designed to be different from traditional social media,” focusing on facilitating conversations with close friends.

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