Instagram’s ‘Design Defect’ Makes It Addictive to Young Users: Complaint

What makes Instagram a “profitable enterprise” for Meta “is precisely what harms its young users,” alleged plaintiff David Hemmer in a product liability and negligence complaint Thursday (docket 4:23-cv-00055) in U.S. District Court for Northern California in San Francisco. He brought the action on behalf of himself and his minor daughter, identified only as “M.H.,” asserting she's one of the young women “harmed by Instagram in just the ways Meta’s researchers anticipated.”

Soon after M.H. started to use Instagram, “she was hooked,” said the complaint, complete with clinical commentary on how Instagram use triggers allegedly harmful chemical reactions in the brains of adolescents. M.H.’s use “spiraled out of her control, injuring her self-image and self-esteem by a harmful barrage of images and videos” that expressly promoted eating disorders like anorexia, it said. As a result of her “compulsive” Instagram use, M.H. was diagnosed before her 15th birthday with anorexia and “a host of associated mental and physical symptoms,” it said. “She continues to struggle with these conditions today.”

Meta generates profit from Instagram “by collecting data on Instagram users, and deploying that data to serve its users targeted advertising,” said the complaint. Meta’s Instagram business model requires creating and maintaining high levels of user engagement with its products, by keeping users on its apps “for as long as possible as often as possible,” it said. “The more time users spend on its apps, the more advertising they see, and the more money Meta makes.”

Meta’s own researchers found young users “are not capable of controlling their Instagram use to protect their health,” said the complaint. Meta knew or should have known about the risks of Instagram use in young users “because its own researchers uncovered and presented them to the company” internally, it said. But in public, Meta “repeatedly denied these risks,” it said, citing 2021 congressional testimony from CEO Mark Zuckerberg attesting to research he said found using social apps to connect with other people can have positive mental health benefits.

Experiencing a successful social interaction “causes the release in the brain of a chemical called dopamine, a neurotransmitter that helps regulate feelings of pleasure and pain,” said the complaint. When dopamine is released in response to a stimulus, a person experiences a feeling of pleasure or reward, “and is driven to seek out the stimulus again,” it said. “This association between stimulus and reward grows stronger each time it is activated.”

Repeated spikes of dopamine over time can cause “neuroadaptation” in the brain of the person experiencing them, said the complaint. This means the person’s brain starts accounting for the increased dopamine levels caused by external stimuli by “downregulating” its normal production of and sensitivity to dopamine, it said.

The person’s brain thereafter “requires more and more of the stimulus to enjoy the same feeling of reward,” said the complaint. If the stimulus, conversely, is withheld, “the person may experience pain or feelings of anxiety and depression,” it said. The brain’s neurological circuitry “has been thus rewired by the addicting product,” it said.

M.H. began using Instagram in December 2016, and her use “quickly metastasized,” said the complaint. Within a year, she was using Instagram for up to four hours a day, every day, “at a crucial developmental period in her life,” it said. Instagram specifically targeted M.H. with “a seemingly unending series of posts and advertisements to retain her attention and keep her on the site,” it said. The messaging and imagery she viewed “promoted unrealistic body images and extreme weight loss,” it said. The content also “glamorized” harmful relationships to food, dieting and exercise, all while undermining M.H.’s “self-image and self-worth,” it said.

The complaint seeks damages for father and daughter, “based on a claim that M.H. was injured by Meta’s product Instagram, which is a defective and unreasonably dangerous product in the way it was designed.” Its “design defect” makes Instagram “more dangerous than an ordinary user would expect considering Instagram’s characteristics, uses of Instagram that were foreseeable to Meta, and lack of any instructions or warnings,” it said. M.H. didn't have knowledge, training or experience “sufficient to know the dangers of Instagram or from its use,” it said.

Hemmer’s complaint alleges Meta is guilty of fraudulent misrepresentation, in violation of California’s Unfair Competition Law. He seeks punitive and compensatory damages in an amount to be determined at trial. Meta didn’t comment Friday.