A Landmark Week for Children’s Rights and the Tech Sector

This week, a federal courtroom in the United States is the stage for what may be the most important legal test yet of how social media affects children and teenagers.

On Tuesday 18th August a trial against Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, got underway in Oakland, California.

Brought by attorneys general from California, Colorado, Kentucky and New Jersey against Meta, the case is part of a broader action filed by 29 states, and is expected to run for six to eight weeks, with Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Instagram head Adam Mosseri expected to testify.

The states allege that Meta created its platforms to be addictive to young users and that their design has caused anxiety, depression, self-harm and, in some cases, suicide. Furthermore, the case also states that the company misled the public about how safe its products are.

Meta has already faced two major losses this year: in March, a California jury found Meta and YouTube negligent over product designs that led to a young user’s depression, self-harm and body dysmorphia.

Earlier in the same month, a New Mexico jury found that Meta had knowingly harmed children’s mental health and concealed information related to child sexual exploitation, resulting in a $375 million penalty.

A tech-industry turning point 

This week’s trial can be considered a turning point for how the tech sector is held accountable for its impact on children.

Being accused of causing this kind of harm is, in itself, extremely damaging to a company’s reputation.

For a group of users who are still developing and need stronger protections in place than adults, the consequences of a platform not being built with their safety in mind can potentially lead to an irreversible breaking of trust.

Will the events currently taking place in California lead powerful technology companies to re-think their approach to platform and service design, and incorporate the views of children and teenagers?

The risk of not engaging youth

“From a child rights perspective, it’s clear that children’s viewpoints were not considered, neither in the development nor in the operation of these services,” says Nina Vollmer, Director Child Rights and Sustainability at Global Child Forum.

This trial highlights that failing to consider children’s perspectives may have significant financial material impact on a company–even if it takes a long time to come into effect–and can also impact regulator and investor trust, which may cause further financial material impact in the long run.

“When taking a safety-by-design approach, fewer resources have to be spent on damage control, even though the potential costs of the latter are more difficult to project than the upfront cost of doing thing right, from the start,” Vollmer notes.

Building products with children’s rights and wellbeing considered from the outset is, in the longer term, cheaper and more predictable.

Better and safer digital spaces

This echoes what we hear directly from young people themselves.

ListenUp! Advancing Digital Wellbeing for Children and Youth is a company initiative led by Global Child Forum that brings together mobile operators, social media platforms, academic experts and children’s rights organisations, including partners Orange, Tele2, Telia Company, and TikTok, around a shared commitment to listen directly to children and young people and build services and products around them.

The first phase of the project resulted in the launch of ListenUp: What Teenagers Want Tech to Hear, a report based on 11 focus groups with 93 teenagers aged 13–17 across eight countries.

“Online spaces are real. They’re where we learn. We explore who we are. We don’t want to be online less. We want digital spaces to work better and feel safer,” one teenager told us.

Another described how digital life is woven into daily life: “For young people, a lot of our friendships, our creativity, even our support systems, exist online.” But that same connection can come at a cost, as one participant put it: “(Being) online can steal our creativity—we stop thinking.”

“In the ListenUp project, young people are telling us that they are expecting companies to take more responsibility and they want to see solutions that are safe for them to use, while giving them the opportunity to grow and develop with the vast possibilities that the online world provides,” adds Vollmer.

A lasting change

As the Meta trial continues, teenagers, parents, child rights advocates and social media users the world over will be monitoring developments closely, to find out whether this responsibility will now be assumed—and will the process mark a step-change in the way young people interact with digital technology?

Global Child Forum works with the private sector to advance children’s rights in business strategy, operations, and value chains. Our annual benchmark assesses the world’s most influential companies on children’s rights.