US states seek $1.4 trillion penalty from Meta over child addiction claims

Four US states are seeking as much as $1.4 trillion in penalties from Meta, alleging the company designed Facebook and Instagram to be addictive for children while concealing the potential risks the platforms pose to young users, according to media reports.The penalty demand was disclosed by Meta in a court filing responding to submissions from the attorneys general of California, Colorado, Kentucky and New Jersey, who are pursuing the case ahead of a trial scheduled to begin next month in Oakland, California.According to the filing, the states have proposed calculating penalties by multiplying the estimated number of affected young users by the maximum fines permitted under their respective state laws. The filings detailing those calculations remain under seal.Meta argued that the proposed penalty, which is close to the company's roughly $1.5 trillion market valuation, is unsupported by the evidence and unprecedented in consumer protection cases."A sanction of that size has no analog in the history of consumer protection enforcement," the company said in its filing.Responding to the claims, a Meta spokesperson told FOX Business that the states' calculations have "no basis in fact or law" and described the demands as "headline-seeking" and disconnected from reality.The lawsuit alleges that Meta knowingly designed features on Facebook and Instagram that encouraged excessive use among children while failing to adequately disclose the risks associated with its platforms.The case is part of a broader legal battle against Meta in the US. Nearly 30 states have separately sued the company in federal court, alleging violations of the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) by collecting data from children without obtaining proper parental consent.Meta has denied the allegations, maintaining that there is no evidence it misled users or the public about the alleged addictiveness of its platforms. The company has also argued that social media addiction is not a recognised psychiatric condition and said Facebook and Instagram are marketed to a general audience rather than specifically to children under the age of 13.