Amnesty International demonstrated in 2025 how easily children and young people who expressed an interest in mental health on TikTok could be drawn into a "spiral of content about depression and suicide." The organization argues that social media platforms endanger all their users through their relentless pursuit of attention and their exploitation of personal data.

Amnesty International's 2025-26 annual report, launched on Tuesday, April 21, 2026, devotes a chapter to human rights abuses committed by social networks, notably highlighting the role of TikTok in disseminating content related to depression and suicide among young people, and that of X in spreading hate speech.

The social network X is not immune. Amnesty International analyzed its recommendation system using the example of the racist riots that occurred in the UK in 2024, following an attack in which three young children were killed in Southport. “False claims that the perpetrator was a Muslim migrant or asylum seeker spread widely online,” the report notes. As X “became a hub for racist, Islamophobic, and xenophobic rhetoric, violence erupted offline, with mobs targeting mosques, refugee centers, and neighborhoods with large Asian, Black, or Muslim populations.”

 

Social network X is also in the dock.

 

“At the same time, X and Meta, which operate Facebook and Instagram, have made severe cuts to their trust and safety teams, responsible for ensuring that the platforms are safe, trustworthy, and free from harmful behavior. The two companies have also scaled back some of their fact-checking programs,” the report notes.

As a result, many countries have considered measures to protect children online. Australia has passed a law banning children under 16 from using social media, and Malaysia has announced it is considering a similar ban. According to Amnesty International, these measures “restricted young people’s right to express themselves and access information online, without addressing the root cause of the problem: that social media puts all users at risk.”

In the legal arena, a significant first victory has been achieved in Kenya in a lawsuit against Meta. The Kenyan High Court declared itself competent to hear the case concerning violations of Kenyan constitutional rights, despite Meta's objections. The case, supported by Amnesty International, was brought by two Ethiopian nationals and the Katiba Institute of Kenya, who accused Facebook of "promoting dangerous content during the armed conflict that ravaged Ethiopia between 2020 and 2022." For the organization, this decision "is hopeful in that it shows that marginalized groups can obtain justice no matter where in the world they are located."

Seydi Gassama and others call on social media companies to review their business model "in order to prevent human rights abuses and to address them when they occur", and ask States to put in place "stricter regulations to protect all users" and to "firmly enforce existing regulations".