By Tandy Lau
Remember when public health hazards were combatted by not leaving the house? Mayor Eric Adams’s State of City address in January highlighted efforts designating social media harm as an environmental toxin. But how exactly does the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DOHMH) address the reel world from the real world?
“We have a number of different steps that we are utilizing to tackle social media,” said Deepa Avula, executive deputy commissioner of the Division of Mental Hygiene. “One is really raising awareness for things the city has already done like announcing the action plan. [Like] looking at steps that parents and caregivers can take to educate themselves about the risks of social media for young people [and] putting out resource guides and other materials for parents and educators around recognizing risks and how to help them not just help monitor kids’ use but also help them navigate… social media and putting in place best practices.
“The other major steps that the city has taken has been the announcement of affirmative litigation against the social media companies to hold them more accountable for some of the harm done to our mental health.”
On Feb. 14, Mayor Adams announced the City and NYC Health + Hospitals filed a lawsuit against Facebook/Meta, Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube and TikTok, alleging the five social media giants targeted school-aged children and fueled a youth mental health crisis. The complaint draft accuses the companies of “a strategy of growth-at-all-costs, recklessly ignoring the impact of their platforms on children’s mental and physical health.”
“This lawsuit builds on the important work we’ve done to advance legislation to rein in the most addictive and dangerous features on social media and the legal action we’ve taken to stop them,” said New York Attorney General Letitia James in her statement. “It is unacceptable that big tech companies can profit off the harm they are doing to young people, and I want to thank Mayor Adams for joining our effort to protect the next generation of New Yorkers.”
Filed in the California Superior Court, the lawsuit also mentions potential impacts on nonwhite youth, pointing to a near 50% higher rate of hopelessness among Black and brown high schoolers compared to white high schoolers.
“One of the things that we want to make sure [of] is, particularly in] Black and brown communities, making sure that parents, caregivers [and] schools have the resources they need to address this issue,” said Avula. “We know that resources are often disparate as well, and so ensuring that people have the proper resources to equip them with guiding kids and looking at some of the factors that are affecting kids.”
She points to the city’s free youth-based mental health program Teen Space and says more than half of participants hail from Black or brown communities. The lawsuit filing also claims Black and brown youth are online more frequently than white youth.
Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, two of the five platforms named as defendants, responded to the Adams administration lawsuit over email.
“We want teens to have safe, age-appropriate experiences online, and we have over 30 tools and features to support them and their parents,” said a Meta spokesperson. “We’ve spent a decade working on these issues and hiring people who have dedicated their careers to keeping young people safe and supported online.”
Snapchat responded to the lawsuit by distinguishing the platform from the typical like/comment model employed by social media companies. The app allows users to send photos privately that disappear after they are opened.
“Snapchat was intentionally designed to be different from traditional social media, with a focus on helping Snapchatters communicate with their close friends. Snapchat opens directly to a camera—rather than a feed of content that encourages passive scrolling—and has no traditional public likes or comments,” said a Snap Inc. spokesperson. “While we will always have more work to do, we feel good about the role Snapchat plays in helping close friends feel connected, happy and prepared as they face the many challenges of adolescence.”
And Google, which owns YouTube, pushed back against the city’s lawsuit.
“Providing young people with a safer, healthier experience online has always been core to our work. In collaboration with youth, mental health, and parenting experts, we’ve built services and policies to give young people age-appropriate experiences and parents robust controls,” said Google spokesperson José Castañeda. “The allegations in this complaint are simply not true.”
TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, did not respond to requests for comment by press time.
Tandy Lau is a Report for America corps member who writes about public safety for the Amsterdam News. Your donation to match our RFA grant helps keep him writing stories like this one; please consider making a tax-deductible gift of any amount today by visiting https://bit.ly/amnews1.
This post was originally published on New York Amsterdam News.