A federal lawsuit has been filed in northern California by a coalition of 33 attorneys general, while eight attorneys general have also filed lawsuits against Meta in their respective state courts.

California’s attorney general Rob Bonta said Meta “has been harming our children and teens, cultivating addiction to boost corporate profits”.

Mr Bonta added: “With today’s lawsuit, we are drawing the line. We must protect our children and we will not back down from this fight. I am grateful for the collaboration of my fellow state attorneys general in standing up for our children and holding Meta accountable.”

The lawsuit alleges that Meta’s business model focused on maximising young users’ time on its platforms, employing harmful and psychologically manipulative platform features while misleading the public about the safety of those features.

It further alleges that Meta published reports purporting to show misleadingly low rates of user harms and that, in spite of the “overwhelming evidence” linking its platforms to young user harms, it refused to address those harms while continuing to conceal and downplay its platforms’ adverse effects.

The 33 states are Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, and Wisconsin.

In a statement, Meta said: “We’re disappointed that instead of working productively with companies across the industry to create clear, age-appropriate standards for the many apps teens use, the attorneys general have chosen this path.”