‘They’re addicting kids and they know it’: the attorney challenging social media

Matthew P Bergman, founding attorney of the Social Media Victims Law Center, argues that social media platforms are harming children much as asbestos did, and that the companies knowingly designed addictive products. The firm, founded in fall 2021, represents families in cases against Meta, Snap, TikTok and Discord, and it targets product design rather than content, since section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act has shielded platforms in past content-based suits. Bergman says the approach adapts 1950s product liability concepts to modern products, and he compares the upcoming Senate hearing to the 1990s tobacco hearing on nicotine.