Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin announces a lawsuit against Google and YouTube on Monday, September 30, 2024 at his Little Rock office. (Tess Vrbin/Arkansas Advocate)
Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin filed a consumer protection lawsuit Monday against Google, YouTube and their parent companies, accusing the digital behemoths of intentionally targeting children with addictive and harmful content.
The complaint, filed in Phillips County Circuit Court, is the latest in state officials’ ongoing efforts to regulate social media’s impact on minors, such as a 2023 social media age verification law currently blocked by a federal court.
Griffin’s 40-page suit alleges that YouTube “amplifies harmful material, doses users with dopamine hits, and drives youth engagement and advertising revenue” through its many programs, including the youth-oriented YouTube Kids. The platform takes advantage of the “undeveloped capacity for self-regulation” in minors’ still-developing brains, making them “particularly vulnerable to chasing the stimuli of social media, e.g. YouTube notifications and ‘likes,’” the complaint states.
“YouTube’s addictive power over Arkansas youth is devastating and has resulted in the State of Arkansas being forced to pour millions of dollars into expanding mental health and other services for young people living here,” the complaint states.
Griffin emphasized during a news conference Monday morning that he meant to discuss addiction “in a clinical way, not in a colloquial way.”
“We’re not talking about it in the loose way that you may say, ‘That food is so good I’m addicted to it.’ … It is something more sinister than that,” Griffin said.
Google is the managing member of YouTube. The other two defendants are Google’s parent company, XXVI Holdings, and its parent company, Alphabet Inc.
In addition to a jury trial and monetary damages, Griffin asks the court to order the defendants “to disgorge and forfeit all profits” that resulted from their alleged misdeeds and “to fund prevention education and treatment for excessive and problematic use of social media.”
Griffin’s complaint accuses the defendants of violating the Arkansas Deceptive Trade Practices Act, which generates fines of up to $10,000 per violation.
“Defendants led users and the parents of young users to believe their social media platforms were safe for use by young people, including through the release of the YouTube Kids product,” the complaint states.
The complaint also accuses the companies of unjust enrichment for “monetiz[ing] the screen time of Arkansas’ citizens” and of being a public nuisance under state law for creating “a mental health crisis.”
Other state action
Since taking office last year, Griffin and Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders have both attributed mental health problems among children, such as depression, body dysmorphia and suicidal ideation, to frequent social media use.
Sanders and Education Secretary Jacob Oliva have advocated for limiting students’ use of cell phones in schools, and lawmakers have directed $7 million to school districts for the resources to lock up students’ devices during class time.
Earlier this month, Griffin and 41 other attorneys general signed a letter to federal lawmakers asking them to require a surgeon general warning on “all algorithm-driven social media platforms” citing the risk of addiction.
Arkansas school districts consider implementing new state cell phone, mental health program
Griffin is the sole plaintiff in Monday’s complaint against YouTube. He told reporters that “the lack of progress and the pace” of lawsuits with multiple attorneys general as plaintiffs frustrates him and he hopes for a quick resolution.
He is also the sole plaintiff in a March 2023 lawsuit against TikTok and its parent company, ByteDance, in Cleburne County Circuit Court. Similarly to Monday’s lawsuit, last year’s complaint accuses the defendants of targeting minors with harmful content, profiting from engagement with said content and deceiving users into believing the platform is safe.
A circuit judge denied TikTok’s motion to dismiss the case in May, and the case is set to go to trial in September 2025, according to court documents.
When asked why his office has filed its complaints in different counties statewide, Griffin said he had “individual reasons” for doing so, but revealing them “would not be smart in litigation.”
The 2023 social media age verification law, Act 689, would require parental permission for minors to access certain websites, but YouTube is one of the exceptions.
Attorneys for NetChoice, the nonprofit trade association for large tech companies that brought the lawsuit, said the law was not narrowly tailored. U.S. District Judge Timothy Brooks agreed in his order issuing a preliminary injunction, while acknowledging the importance of protecting minors online.
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