SALT LAKE CITY — Hundreds of Utahns are among thousands across the country who are suing the major social media platforms, saying they are promoting harmful content.
This week is Eating Disorder Awareness Week, and advocates are raising alarms about something making the issue worse: social media. According to the National Eating Disorders Association, eating disorders have the second-highest mortality rates of all psychiatric illnesses.
Social media giants — including Snapchat, TikTok, YouTube and Meta — are facing lawsuits from thousands of plaintiffs. They’re claiming that the platforms are addictive and have led to self-harm, depression, body image issues, and eating disorders.
Joel Wright is a local lawyer representing about 200 of these plaintiffs, many of whom are from Utah. “The algorithm chooses and favors content,” Wright said. “The social media companies have one goal and one goal only and that is screen time.”
He said it doesn’t always start with extreme material. Eating disorder content includes anything that is extreme dieting or workouts, he said. “Sometimes a girl will type in healthy quinoa recipes,” he said. “And then they get inundated with eating disorder content.”
From there, posts about restrictive diets and extreme weight loss rise to the top.
“One woman posts how she lost 7 pounds in 7 days on a 500‑calorie diet — it gets 10,000 views,” he said. “She posts more, the algorithm notices, and soon eating disorder content dominates her feed. It spins out of control.”
The Center for Change’s CEO, Nicole Hawkins, said some of their clients have signed onto the lawsuit as well. The center is one of the oldest eating disorder programs in the country.
Hawkins said she’s seen the impact of social media make the situation worse. “Our clients will tell us that when they sign into their social media here in even our zip code they are fed content about eating disorders and when they come in they are fed content about how to break the rules in treatment,” she said.
Video trends coupled with the need for more views can cause people to keep posting the harmful content.
“Like even during Covid, for example, there was a TikTok trend to come into treatment and film yourself with an NG tube, and then that went viral, so then everyone wanted to come into treatment and get a feeding tube just so that it could go viral,” Hawkins said.
TikTok and Snapchat have already settled in their part of the lawsuit. Now, the spotlight is on Meta and YouTube.
Earlier in February, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified in court, saying the mental health impacts of social media are “nuanced”. He also said that their internal data doesn’t show that Instagram promotes harmful ideas.
Wright said that the companies argue their position from the standpoint of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996, which states they aren’t responsible for 3rd party posts. “We looked at it deeper and said okay, you’re not responsible for the content, but you’re responsible for the algorithm,” Wright said.
He said their goal is not only monetary damages to their clients but a push to resign the algorithm and add more regulations.
Wright said they’ll either settle or a verdict could come in late March or early April.
“I’m deeply touched to be working on this, and I’m very proud of the families that have come forward,” he said.
