In two previous articles, I outlined all the things that Facebook and Meta have done wrong. Besides losing two cases to juries in New Mexico and California about causing teen addiction and mental health problems, Facebook has wrong caused thousands of users to lose accounts due to problems with selfies, algorithms, rejected ads, too many ads on their personal feeds, and some advertisers with wrongly rejected ads have even lost the money they paid.
For more details on the campaign against Facebook, you can see the recently published book on Amazon, The Latest in the Campaign Against Facebook: What the Government Needs to Do to Fix What’s Wrong with Facebook published by American Leadership Books
For all these reasons and more, Facebook and Meta need to be investigated and regulated by the government. Now you are invited to join a growing letter writing campaign to Congress and the White House.
Here’s a draft of a letter you can send to your own Senator and House Representatives on the committees interested in commerce, consumer protection, technology, data privacy, communications, small business, trade, and justice. You can look them up, or I’ll post a list of these in my next article. Now here’s the letter you can send or draft your own.
[Your Name]
[Your Street Address]
[City, State ZIP]
[Email Address]
[Date]
The Honorable [Full Name]
[Address of Senator or Representative]
Dear [Senator/Representative] [Last Name],
I am writing as a concerned constituent to urge you to take immediate action to protect children and teens from the harmful design of social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram owned by Meta. Recent jury verdicts in California and New Mexico have confirmed, in a court of law, what parents, educators, and young people have been saying for years: its platforms have been intentionally engineered in ways that addict youth and damage their mental health.
In the California case K.M.G. (Kaley) v. Meta and Google, a jury found that design features of Instagram and YouTube were negligent and contributed to a young woman’s mental‑health distress. The jury awarded millions of dollars in compensatory and punitive damages, making clear that the harm was not accidental, but the predictable result of product choices that maximized engagement over safety. In New Mexico, a separate jury recently ordered Meta to pay hundreds of millions of dollars for violating state law and endangering children, again finding that the company misled families and regulators about the risks to young users. And there are thousands more cases that have been filed against Facebook and Meta.
Plus, Facebook has many other problems, including wrongly terminating thousands of users for not passing a selfie verification program that doesn’t work very well, for falsely claiming users violate its community standards policies due to an algorithm operating badly, for terminating some advertisers for no good reason and not refunding their money, for inundating users with ads in their personal feed, and more.
These cases are just the beginning. They represent the first wave of thousands of lawsuits from families, school districts, and states that all point to the same conclusion: the core design of these platforms — endless scroll, algorithmically targeted feeds, constant notifications, and failure to enforce meaningful age protections — is fueling anxiety, depression, self‑harm, and other serious harms among youth. Litigation alone cannot fix a problem this widespread, especially when wealthy companies can delay accountability through years of appeals. That is why we need you and your colleagues in Congress to act now.
I respectfully urge you to:
Support and co‑sponsor strong bipartisan legislation that establishes age‑appropriate design standards for platforms used by minors, including limits on addictive features and data‑driven targeting of children and teens.
Require independent safety audits, transparency reporting, and real enforcement mechanisms so that companies cannot hide internal research about youth harms or quietly roll back safety tools.
Hold public hearings that call Meta, Google/YouTube, and other major platforms to account for their design choices and their responses to these recent jury verdicts.
Ask Facebook and Meta to correct its other problems involving selfies, algorithms, and advertising which are wrongly rejecting users and ads.
A short video now circulating online The Latest Campaign Against Facebook, is at the Changemakers Publishing YouTube channel
The video helps explain what Facebook and related platforms have done wrong and why federal rules are urgently needed; I encourage you and your staff to watch and to listen to the voices of families and young people who have been directly affected.
Their stories, combined with these landmark jury decisions, show clearly that voluntary self‑regulation by Big Tech has failed.
A more detailed book about the many wrongs Facebook has committed is The Latest in the Campaign Against Facebook: What the Government Needs to Do to Fix What’s Wrong with Facebook published by American Leadership Books
I hope you will take action to protect teens and other users from addictive and other harmful social‑media design, and if you do take action, please let me know, so I can advise others in my social networks and community of what you are doing to help in this important cause. Thank you for your attention to this urgent matter and for your public service.
Sincerely,
[Your Name]
[City, State]
[Contact Information]
To set up interviews or speaking engagements with the author of the book and of the letter writing campaign coordinator, Gini Graham Scott, PhD, contact:
Karen Andrews
Executive Assistant
Changemakers Publishing and Writing
2145 San Ramon Valley Blvd., #4-366
San Ramon, CA 94583
(925) 804-6333
changemakerspublishingandwriting.com
