Short-form video platform TikTok settled a landmark social media addiction lawsuit Monday right before a trial was scheduled to take place in California, making it the second tech company to do so.
TikTok and Snap have reached settlements to avoid the trial, which is still set to proceed against Meta and YouTube for allegedly engineering their products to harm users’ mental health and to get consumers addicted to the apps. It is the first of several major lawsuits against social media companies based on allegations that the platforms harmed teenagers through their addictiveness and deleterious impacts on mental health.
Snap’s settlement agreement was finalized last week, removing it from the trial in a case involving a California woman claiming she became addicted to social media platforms as a child and suffered negative mental health effects as a result.
“This is a good resolution, and we are pleased with the settlement,” Mark Lanier, an attorney for the plaintiff, said in a statement. “Our focus has now turned to the Meta and YouTube for this trial.”
Individual plaintiffs, school districts, and states attorneys general have launched legal challenges against tech companies that have been compared to past lawsuits against large cigarette companies. One such challenge is New Mexico’s case against Meta, where Attorney General Raul Torrez is accusing the company of failing to protect teenagers on Facebook and Instagram from sexual predators and exploitation.
Tech firms routinely argue they are protected from liability for their content under Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act. TikTok, Meta, Snap, and other platforms are defendants in numerous other cases set to go to trial later this year. Those cases also tackle questions surrounding social media content and teenage mental health. If the lawsuits succeed, they could open the floodgates to further liability claims against tech companies for creating defective products.
All of the cases argue platform features such as infinite scrolling, algorithm recommendations, and autoplay videos are to blame for social media addiction, worsening mental health, and eating disorders. The companies dispute the prevalence of social media addiction and routinely point to the safety features they have adopted for younger users in recent years.
Concerns about declining attention spans and social media addiction among teenagers are not new. Those fears have prompted numerous states and school districts to enact phone bans in school. Those bans have received overwhelming support from teenagers and caretakers. The growing bipartisan movement to restrict phone usage in schools came about because of the intrusive nature of constant device notifications for texts and other activities.