A class action lawsuit filed in California on Monday accuses Instagram and its parent company Meta of intentionally creating products that are addictive to children. 

Lawyers acting on behalf of the New York teenager, known only as AA, claim that the social media giant uses compulsive design to keep minors scrolling despite knowing it could harm their mental health.

According to the lawsuit, the teen began using Instagram at 10 years old, and claims that Meta did little to verify her age despite Instagram’s rules banning users under 13. The complaint states that AA now spends five hours every day on the app, including an hour before sleeping.

The lawsuit, first reported by the Independent, alleges this has resulted in her being “unable to put her phone away” and causing her to become “overwhelmed with anxiety” when she does not check notifications. Lawyers for the family argue the minor has “internalised the belief that her friends are constantly ignoring her” when they do not like or engage with her posts.

Citing internal documents, lawyers contend that Meta continually tried to recruit more teenagers to its services, despite internal and external reports that its apps were having a negative effect on younger users. 

In compensation, lawyers are seeking $5 billion for children who use Instagram every day in the US, and are further asking the court to ban Instagram from providing many core features of the app to under-18s.

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Last year, Meta was sued in a joint complaint by 33 US states, with claims that the company’s business practices violated the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act. Lawyers argued that features like infinite scroll were created with the express goal of hooking young users, citing the engineer who developed infinite scroll as telling the BBC such features were created to be “maximally addicting”.

That followed the Congressional testimony of ex-Facebook data engineer turned whistleblower Frances Haugen, who told American lawmakers in 2021 that she believed ‘Facebook’s products harm children’, and claimed the company put profit before user safety.

In the UK, Ofcom recently found that school aged children were more routinely accessing social media and online platforms without supervision, and observed a gap between older children’s exposure to potentially harmful online content and their willingness to inform parents.