Meta agreed on Thursday to settle a social media addiction lawsuit brought by a Kentucky school district, precluding a bellwether trial accusing tech giants of causing harm to young users and, by extension, their schools.
The case, which was scheduled to go to trial in mid-June in U.S. District Court in Oakland, Calif., was among 1,200 lawsuits brought by school districts accusing Meta, TikTok, Snapchat and YouTube of negligence and public nuisance.
The lawsuits claim the companies created addictive technologies that resulted in significant costs for mental health counseling, tech programs and other services paid for by schools.
YouTube, Snap and TikTok previously settled with the Kentucky district, Breathitt County Schools. While the terms were not disclosed, Breathitt’s lawsuit had asked for more than $60 million to finance mental health programs.
The settlements followed two major losses in social media addiction cases in March, when juries in Los Angeles and New Mexico found Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, liable for causing harm to young users.
The companies have now paid to avert one in a flood of similar lawsuits expected to go to trial over the next two years, after thousands of individuals, states and schools sued over allegations that the companies created their products to be as addictive as cigarettes or casinos.
Drawing a page from the playbook used against Big Tobacco in the 1990s, the lawsuits say social media features like infinite scroll and video autoplay create compulsive use by minors. The addictive use of technology has led to depression, anxiety, eating disorders and suicidal thoughts for young people, the suits claim.
Meta, Snap, TikTok and YouTube, which is owned by Google, all argue that there is no clear scientific link between tech use and addiction and insist that there needs to be strong proof that their products significantly harmed young users.
But the plaintiffs’ legal strategy has already shown promise.
In late March, a Los Angeles jury found Meta and YouTube liable for personal injury claims brought by a now-20-year-old woman, known as K.G.M. The landmark case accused the companies of engineering their products in ways that kept her online for hours, leading to anxiety and body dysmorphia. The jury awarded her $6 million in damages.
Meta was also found liable that month in a child safety case brought by the New Mexico attorney general, who accused the company of failing to live up to consumer protection laws by allowing predators to reach children on its apps. A New Mexico court awarded the state $375 million in damages, and a judge is weighing the state’s pursuit of changes to Instagram’s and Facebook’s technologies to make them safer and less addictive for young users.
Meta and YouTube have said they will appeal those decisions.
The Kentucky lawsuit was one of a series of federal cases filed by school districts and state attorneys general scheduled for jury trials in Oakland starting this summer. The next school district case, brought by a district in Tucson, Ariz., is slated to begin in mid-August.
The Kentucky district’s lead lawyers, Lexi Hazam, Previn Warren, Chris Seeger and Ronald Johnson, said in a statement that they had turned their attention to other lawsuits against the social media giants.
“Our focus remains on pursuing justice for the remaining 1,200 school districts who have filed cases,” they said.
Liza Crenshaw, a spokeswoman for Meta, said, “We’ve resolved this case amicably and remain focused on our longstanding work to build protections like Teen Accounts that help teens stay safe online, while giving parents simple controls to support their families.”
Cecilia Kang reports on technology and regulatory policy for The Times from Washington. She has written about technology for over two decades.
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