Google and Meta Sued for Mentally Harassing Teenagers in America

The rapid development of technology means that social media users tend to increase from year to year.

Apart from helping and making it easier for people to connect with relatives and friends, it turns out that various social media also have a negative impact on some people.

tafansa.id reported via Reuters in early 2023, several technology giants, including Google's parent company Alphabet Inc, Meta Platforms Inc, ByteDance TikTok and Snap Inc, were reportedly sued by a public school in Seattle, United States.

This demand is due to mental health problems experienced by teenagers in American schools due to social media.

According to the school, these technology giants deliberately designed their applications so that their users, in this case, school students, were addicted to the platform.

So, as a result of playing on social media for too long, these teenagers experience a mental health crisis.

"Meta et al. succeeded in controlling and influencing the weaknesses of young people's brains, thus binding tens of millions of students in American schools.

"Behind the advantages of these platforms, it turns out that the defendant wants their use to be addictive so that many students abuse social media platforms," wrote the school in its accusation file.

According to the school's report, the student experienced a more severe mental condition after previously having a bad mental history.

Schools are also taking action to address the impact of social media addiction, such as requiring teachers to take training so they can identify and treat the symptoms of sick students.

Not only that, trained employees are also employed in the school environment to help with this problem. Apart from that, they also create additional fees to warn students of the negative impacts of social media. The costs referred to here are compensation for financial and other losses.

Meanwhile, Google wrote in an official statement that they had made massive investments so that user security could be created.

They don't only do this for teenage users but also for children who use their various platforms.

This can be seen from the "strong protection and special features to prioritize well-being" that Google introduced.

On the other hand, Snapchat also expressed its defence that it had collaborated with several mental health organizations.

They do this when creating tools in the application. Snapchat also admitted that the mental health demands of the school were their top priority.