WASHINGTON — Are social media apps as addictive as cigarettes? Are these sites defective products?
These are the allegations that Meta, Snap, TikTok and YouTube will face this year in a series of historic trials. Teenagers, school districts (public education systems in the USA) and states have filed thousands of lawsuits accusing social media titans of designing platforms that encouraged excessive use by millions of young Americans, leading to personal harm and other harm.
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One such pilot case occurs with jury selection in the Superior Court of California in Los Angeles County. A Californian woman now in her 20s, identified by the initials KGM, filed the lawsuit in 2023, alleging that she became dependent on social networking sites as a child and that, as a result, she developed anxiety, depression and body image issues.
The cases represent one of the most significant legal threats to Meta, Snap, TikTok and YouTube, potentially leading to new responsibilities related to users’ well-being. Inspired by a legal strategy used against the tobacco industry in the last century, lawyers plan to support the argument that companies created addictive products.
A victory could pave the way for more lawsuits filed by millions of social media users. It could also result in huge financial damages and changes to platform design.
The companies, which have largely escaped previous legal threats by citing federal protection that exempts them from liability for what their users post, have mobilized to defend themselves.
They preemptively argued that courts should dismiss cases and hired armies of lawyers from big firms. Last week, Snap reached a settlement with KGM for an undisclosed amount.
“This is a cutting-edge case involving gigantic, very powerful companies that, until now, have managed to avoid liability much better than many other industries,” said Benjamin Zipursky, a professor at Fordham Law School and an expert in tort law. He added: “They could face some kind of accountability here.”
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In the first trial, Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, and Neal Mohan, who runs YouTube, are among the executives who must face questions arising from internal company documents that warned that their products could cause harm.
A jury trial increases challenges for companies, according to legal experts, as jurors can be more easily influenced when teenagers take the witness stand to claim they were harmed.
The cases have been compared to those brought against the tobacco industry in the 1990s, when companies such as Philip Morris and RJ Reynolds were accused of hiding information about the harms of cigarettes.
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In 1998, these companies reached a $206 billion master agreement with more than 40 states that resulted in a commitment to stop marketing to minors. Strict tobacco regulations and a drop in consumption followed.
“This is ground zero in our fight against social media, where society will set new expectations and standards for how social media companies can treat our children,” said Joseph VanZandt, one of the lead lawyers in the Los Angeles trial.
The tech giants plan to argue that there is no scientific evidence that social media is addictive and that the actions violate protections for free speech online, according to press briefings.
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Snap, which owns Snapchat, said in a statement that it resolved its part of the KGM lawsuit last week. She remains a defendant in other social media addiction cases, but did not respond to additional requests for comment.
TikTok declined to comment. YouTube, which is owned by Google, is not a social media platform and has offered products like YouTube Kids with extra security measures for years, company executives told reporters on a call last week.
“Providing young people with a safer, healthier experience has always been central to our work,” said José Castañeda, a YouTube spokesperson.
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Meta, which controls Instagram and Facebook, said in a blog post last week that the cases cherry-pick statements from executives in internal documents and that the first trial “oversimplifies” the issue.
“Doctors and researchers find that mental health is a deeply complex and multifaceted issue, and trends in adolescent well-being are neither clear nor universal,” the company added.
Concern about the effects of social media on children has increased around the world. The European Union, the United Kingdom and other countries have passed laws that limit certain features of platforms for children. Last month, Australia banned children under 16 from using social media.
In the United States, Congress has been threatening action against social media companies for years, but most initiatives have failed. Lawmakers held hearings on the issue, including one in which Zuckerberg was forced to stand up and apologize to parents who say social media contributed to their children’s deaths.
And while states like California, Texas and Ohio have passed laws aimed at protecting children online, technology companies have managed to block many of these laws in court on free speech grounds.
In the personal injury cases now expected to go to trial, lawyers for the plaintiffs said, they plan to argue that features such as infinite scrolling, automatic video playback and algorithmic recommendations lead to compulsive use of social media and cause mental health problems, including anxiety, depression, eating disorders and self-harm.
In total, nine cases are expected to go to trial in state courts in Los Angeles. A separate set of federal lawsuits filed by school districts and several attorneys general will be heard this summer in U.S. District Court in Oakland, California, where the plaintiffs plan to argue that social media constitutes a public nuisance and that they have had to bear the costs of treating a generation of young people suffering from addictive use of these platforms.
The Los Angeles cases will be overseen by Judge Carolyn Kuhl, who served in the Reagan administration and was appointed to the state court in 1995 by then-Governor Pete Wilson, a Republican.
KGM created a YouTube account at age 8, then joined Instagram at age 9; on Musical.ly, now TikTok, at 10; and on Snapchat at 11.
His lawyers said they would argue that social platforms have created addictive products comparable to cigarettes.
Beauty filters on Instagram and Snapchat force toxic comparisons that cause body dysmorphia, KGM lawyers claim
At trial, plaintiffs’ lawyers also plan to rely on a large body of internal documents from the past decade that show technology executives knew and discussed the negative effects of their products on children.
They intend to argue that companies put profits above users’ well-being, even as employees begged executives to turn off certain tools.
In 2019, Meta removed some beauty filters from Instagram that made users look as if they had undergone plastic surgery. Internal documents showed that in 2019 and 2020, Meta executives emailed Zuckerberg asking him to reconsider a plan to restore those filters.
Internally, it was known that the filters led young users, especially girls, to have body image issues. One executive said her own daughter had suffered from body dysmorphia. Even so, the filters were restored.
Other internal YouTube documents in recent years have shown that executives discussed how to make the app more “addictive” to “compel users to come back for more.”
The social media companies plan to cite Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996, which protects websites from liability for content created by their users.
The civil litigation is expected to drag on for years. Dozens of parents pushing for regulation of social media companies plan to watch parts of the trials.
Julianna Arnold of Los Angeles, who created the nonprofit Parents Rise to push for social media regulation, said her daughter, Coco, was found dead at age 17 in New York in 2022 after obtaining a drug from a dealer on Instagram.
In 2024, Arnold sat behind Zuckerberg in Congress when he apologized to parents who lost their children.
In the absence of regulation, said Arnold, who is not a plaintiff in personal injury cases, she hopes the judgments will force change at companies.
“These trials are now our hope that the world will see how dangerous these social media platforms are,” he said.
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