Social Media Giants Face Landmark Legal Tests on Child Safety
Starting this week, a series of trials will test a new legal strategy claiming that Meta, TikTok, Snap and YouTube caused personal injury through addictive products.
Starting this week, a series of trials will test a new legal strategy claiming that Meta, TikTok, Snap and YouTube caused personal injury through addictive products.
Are social media apps addictive like cigarettes? Are these sites defective products?
Those are the claims that Meta, Snap, TikTok and YouTube will face this year in a series of landmark trials. Teenagers, school districts and states have filed thousands of lawsuits accusing the social media titans of designing platforms that encouraged excessive use by millions of young Americans, leading to personal injury and other harms.
On Tuesday, the first of these bellwether cases is scheduled to start with jury selection in California Superior Court of Los Angeles County. A now-20-year-old Californian identified by the initials K.G.M. filed the lawsuit in 2023, claiming she became addicted to the social media sites as a child and experienced anxiety, depression and body-image issues as a result.
The cases pose one of the most significant legal threats to Meta, Snap, TikTok and YouTube, potentially opening them up to new liabilities for users’ well-being. Drawing inspiration from a legal playbook used against Big Tobacco last century, lawyers plan to use the argument that the companies created addictive products.
A win could open the door to more lawsuits from millions of social media users. It could also lead to huge monetary damages and changes to social media sites’ designs.
The companies, which have largely dodged previous legal threats by citing a federal shield that protects them from liability for what their users post, have been scrambling to defend themselves. They have pre-emptively argued that the courts should drop the cases and hired armies of litigators from top law firms. Last week, Snap settled with K.G.M. for an undisclosed amount. On Monday evening, TikTok also reached a settlement with K.G.M. for an undisclosed amount, according to one of the lead plaintiff lawyers.
“This is a cutting-edge case of gargantuan and very powerful companies that have so far managed to avoid liability far better than many other industries,” said Benjamin Zipursky, a professor at Fordham Law School who is an expert in tort law. He added, “They may face some accountability here.”
