New Jersey has officially united with 32 states in a lawsuit which criticizes Meta, stating that the company designed Facebook and Instagram in order to purposely increase addiction among children and teens. This violates the state’s federal laws that protect privacy and online security. 

 As part of the statement, it has been remarked that Meta previously acknowledged the fact that its platforms could potentially harm youth psychologically, but ignored the possibility and further decided to install features such as “infinite scroll” to encourage this addiction. Addiction in users benefit the company, as Meta’s profit is increased through selling advertisements targeting users. 

In addition to these facts, it has been discovered that Meta also collected data from underage users without consent from parents. Due to the information presented, New Jersey Attorney Matt Platkin strives to hold Meta and Mark Zuckerberg liable for the company’s misleading and deceptive operations. 

Although allegations have been released and research has been conducted, Meta declines the propositions to desert it’s use of it’s known unfavorable features, and the company has planned on spreading the addictive applications to WhatsApp, Messenger, and other apps. 

Supporting the argument, the states have recognized Meta’s intellectually deceptive features, such as recommendation algorithms, which have been labelled as “dopamine-manipulating,” social comparison qualities, filter features that have stimulated dysmorphia, and infinite scroll, which causes fixation among scrolling users.