She initially became moody and distant, but that eventually turned into anxiety, depression, and an eating disorder. At 15, she was hospitalized with suicidal thoughts.
Now 19 and a sophomore in college, she is still working to recover from serious mental health issues. But when she read the facebook docsa trove of company documents leaked by whistleblower Frances Haugen last year, she said she saw herself in Facebook’s internal investigation into the effects of its apps on teens.
Among the documents: Studies showing Instagram was contributing to mental health problems among young adults, especially women. A slide first reported by the Wall Street Journal, acknowledged that “we worsen body image problems for one in three adolescents.” (Facebook downplayed his own inner findings before congressional hearings last year).
“Seeing all the knowledge that Meta had and looking back on my past and remembering everything that happened to me, they knew exactly what was going on,” Spence said.
Spence and his parents, from Long Island, are among a wave of plaintiffs suing Meta this week, citing the Facebook Papers to argue that the company not only addicted them or their children, but did so knowing the damage it could represent. The lawsuits make the charges against Meta more often seen in consumer product lawsuits or cigarette litigation, but they are relatively new to Silicon Valley: that the company produced a defective product and failed to warn users about the dangers to kids.
The Spences’ attorney, Matthew Bergman, who founded the Social Media Victims Law Center, compared the case to the 25 years he spent filing lawsuits against asbestos companies.
“When I read the Facebook documents, it made asbestos companies look like choirboys,” he said. “It’s one thing to make a product that you know or should have known is not safe; It is another thing to intentionally addicte children, knowing that their frontal cortices are not developed, with the sole intention of maximizing their profits.”
In addition to the Spence family, plaintiffs in eight different states have filed lawsuits in federal court against Meta since June 3, represented by Beasley Allen, a law firm based in Montgomery, Alabama.
The lead attorney in those cases, Joseph VanZandt, said these eight lawsuits were just the beginning; he predicted the firm would help “dozens” more plaintiffs file cases in the coming weeks, most from parents whose children used the apps.
“We see this as a defective product, like you have any other type of defective consumer product that hurt people,” said VanZandt, who previously litigated cases against the e-cigarette company Juul. “There is a known risk to [children] use these platforms and there are no warnings about it, there are no warnings for their parents.”
A Meta spokesman declined to comment on Spences’ lawsuit or the eight filed by Beasley Allen, citing active litigation.
The company partners with nonprofits to provide in-app resources to users searching for or posting about body image issues, eating disorders or self-harm, according to the spokesperson. In Q2 2021, the company also removed 96% of content related to self-harm before it was reported. It has also tightened parental controls and uses AI to prevent young children from joining its platforms.
The minimum age to join Facebook and Instagram is 13 years old. However, the Spence family’s lawsuit alleges that Meta “knowingly fails to verify or verify the authenticity of the email account, at least in part, so that it can claim plausible deniability as to the millions of young children who use its application that are less than thirteen years old”. Alexis was able to create accounts before the age of 13 using a fake email address and a school email that did not have an inbox.
Another finding in the Facebook Docs was that the company viewed teens opening multiple accounts, often known as ‘finstas’, short for fake Instagram, as a potential engine for growth. Alexis had multiple accounts, which the Spences’ lawsuit alleges only deepened her mental health issues. In her finsta, they argue, she was more exposed to the app’s algorithms and was able to hide her use from her parents even when they discovered her main account.
As Alexis’s mental health worsened, her parents and doctors searched unsuccessfully for a cause, overlooking the effects of social media, according to her mother, Kathleen Spence.
“At the time, we didn’t even know it was a social media and Instagram issue,” he said. “But behind closed doors, Facebook had documentation: how addicted these kids were and how they can keep them more addicted and how they can get them to have multiple accounts.”
“It really wasn’t until Facebook whistleblower Francis Haugen came along that we really started to understand and look and say, ‘Wow, that’s what we went through with Alexis,'” added Kathleen Spence.
hausen testified before Congress last fall that Facebook prioritized its bottom line over the safety of its users, including children. The company vehemently denied the allegations, saying Haugen did not work on many of the issues described in the documents. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg called it a “false image of the company being painted,” especially in the area of child safety.
VanZandt said the Facebook Docs were “incredibly beneficial” in building his company’s cases, though he argued that “the significance of the stakes here will warrant substantial discovery at the company.” He said he will seek to take statements from employees and review more internal documents.
This month’s lawsuits are not the first to rely on the leaked documents to build a case against Meta. A Connecticut woman, Tammy Rodriguez, sued Meta and Snap in January after her 11-year-old son died by suicide.
“The only thing unusual about Alexis’ case is that she’s here to tell him,” said Bergman, who also represents Rodriguez.
Bergman maintained that parents like Kathleen Spence can do “everything right,” but the documents show that social media companies are working to subvert that.
“He did everything a reasonable parent would be expected to do,” Bergman said. “But these products were explicitly designed to thwart those efforts, to the detriment of Alexis.”
