Facebook and Instagram, according to the complaint, were found to be popular among children under the age of 13, a demographic explicitly prohibited by company policy.
Negative impacts ignored by Meta
An email from a Facebook safety executive in 2019 hinted at the potential negative impact on the company’s business if stricter measures were imposed on younger users.
However, a year later, the same executive expressed frustration over the company’s lack of enthusiasm for proactively identifying and removing underage users from its platforms, despite readily studying their usage patterns for business purposes.
Highlighting the scale of the issue, the legal complaint exposed that Meta Platforms often have a backlog of up to 2.5 million accounts of younger children awaiting action.
This raises serious questions about the company’s commitment to safeguarding the well-being of its youngest users.
As the legal battle unfolds, this revelation sheds light on the darker side of social media platforms and prompts a critical examination of the responsibility tech giants have in shaping the digital experiences of the most vulnerable demographic – our children.
