These ‘toys’ are killing our kids

Mark Zuckerberg is a parent, which is why his new 1,400-acre Hawaiian compound includes an underground bunker the size of a mansion. He’s spending whatever he thinks it will take to keep his daughters safe—even in a hypothetical apocalypse.

As a CEO, though, Zuckerberg isn’t willing to spend a cent over $270 each to keep our kids safe—not even if their lives depend on it. 

And they might. Just ask the parents of Englyn Roberts, a 14-year-old from Louisiana who took her own life after Instagram’s algorithm sent her numerous mentally-harmful posts, they say, including one modeling self-strangulation. Or ask the parents of Gavin Guffey, a 17-year-old from South Carolina who died by suicide after being sextorted.

As teen social media use has risen — up to 95 percent of 13-17 years old now say they now use social media — so has the number of young people dying by suicide. From 2007 through 2021, suicide rates for Americans ages 10 to 24 rose 62 percent, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. You don’t have to be a genius to connect the dots. Just read Englyn’s story or Gavin’s — which is detailed in a new wrongful death lawsuit his father, a South Carolina state representative, filed last week against Meta and Instagram. (State Rep. Brandon Guffey is not alone: more than 2,000 other families are already suing social media companies over harms their children have suffered, reports CBS News.) 

If Big Tech continues their current business model, your kid might end up underground, too. Except it won’t be in an apocalypse-proof bunker in Hawaii.

Now, about that $270.

Although Meta has denied putting a monetary value on kids, a recently-released unredacted version of a lawsuit brought by attorneys general from 33 states includes an internal email showing how Meta characterized its youngest users in 2018: “The lifetime value of a 13 y/o teen is roughly $270 per teen.” The email went on to caution Meta employees that, “[t]his number is core to making decisions about your business,” and, accordingly, “you do not want to spend more than the LTV of the user.”

In other words, our kids are profit centers and it doesn’t make business sense for Meta to spend more than $270 to make the platform safe for them. As a corporation, Meta’s goal is to maximize profits—even, apparently, if that means more kids die. 

Ford came to a similar conclusion back in the 1970s. When the “Pinto Memo” leaked, Americans learned the company had calculated the cost of letting some customers burn to death because of a faulty gas tank design. Ford had decided it was cheaper to pay out when people died (about $200,000 a fatality at that time) than it was to fix all the gas tanks.
The revelations in the unredacted complaint should be a wake-up call for every parent. They also should guide the Senate Judiciary Committee’s hearing on Wednesday, when five Big Tech CEOs will testify about “their failure to protect children online.”

Among the most troubling revelations in the complaint: Meta knowingly designs its apps to keep kids all-in, all the time, despite collecting evidence of how that’s harming kids.

Engineering compulsive use is, ultimately, how Meta makes money. Want to know what its profits (from kids alone) look like? Researchers estimate that kids account for 30 to 40 percent of all advertising revenue from the big six social media companies. In 2022, that amounted to $11 billion dollars.

Guess who’s paying for that apocalypse-ready bunker in Hawaii? In effect, dead kids. Sad kids. Bulimic kids. Addicted kids. 

Social media apps are not a necessity. They’re entertainment. They’re supposed to be fun, like a toy. Now imagine there was a toy with a slight chance of making your kid suicidal, bulimic, or just plain depressed. A toy that could expose them to porn or, worse, a pedophile. You’d never buy it. Yet Zuckerberg’s company has created exactly that product.

Last year, after just four deaths, every single model of the Onewheel electric skateboard was recalled. The Ford Pinto was finally recalled after 27 deaths. Where’s the regulations requiring a recall for Meta? 

You’d think even Mark Zuckerberg, as a parent, would want one. 

Julie Scelfo is a journalist and executive director of Get Media Savvy, a nonprofit working to establish a healthier media environment for kids and families.