Jury selection begins today in Los Angeles for a lawsuit against Meta and Snap, brought by two plaintiffs who claim the companies’ platforms were designed Addictive factor – the last in one Wave of cases focus on the impact of social media on young people mental health.
The plaintiffs sued in 2023, alleging that endless scrolling, Snapstreaks and other features on social media platforms were hooking them up and harming their mental health.
The first, a 16-year-old from Illinois, identified in court documents as SJ, began using Snapchat as a young child and claims that the app’s features led to compulsive use and contributed to depression, reduced sleep, anxiety, an eating disorder, suicidal ideation and self-harm. The other plaintiff, KDB, an 18-year-old from Mississippi, said her use of Meta’s platforms and Snapchat from a young age also contributed to mental health issues and self-harm.
“The defendants designed the platforms defectively to appeal to and addict especially minors and young adults, who were especially unable to appreciate the risks of the platforms, and especially susceptible to harm from these products,” the plaintiffs’ lawyers argued in the complaint, filed in a Los Angeles court.
TikTok and Alphabet’s YouTube were part of the original lawsuit, but settled before the trial. Meta also settled with SJ, the Illinois plaintiff.
A spokesperson for Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, said the company disagrees with the KDB’s allegations.
“A young person’s mental health is shaped by many factors, as the evidence in this trial shows,” the spokesperson said in an email. “The plaintiff used TikTok much more than Instagram or Facebook, and her personal circumstances were a significant factor in her struggles.”
A spokesperson for Snap, Snapchat’s parent company, also disputed the claims and defended the company’s actions.
“We have built security measures into the platform, introduced security tools and educational resources, and we believe the evidence supports that we put our community first, and that these allegations fundamentally misrepresent the plaintiffs’ experiences on Snapchat and how our platform was designed,” they said in a statement.
The companies are expected to argue that other factors, not their platforms, were responsible for the plaintiffs’ mental health problems.
Plaintiffs are seeking an unspecified amount in compensatory and punitive damages.
“This will be the first case against Snapchat and the first time the public will have a chance to see some of its documents,” Mark Lanier, the founder of the Lanier Law Firm and lead attorney for the plaintiffs, said in an email.
Instagram chief Adam Mosseri, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Snap CEO Evan Spiegel are all expected to take the stand during the trial, which the plaintiffs’ lawyers say is likely to run until mid-December. Opening statements are scheduled to begin in early November, with Judge Carolyn Kuhl presiding.
Earlier this week, Meta and Snap asked that the cases be split into two separate lawsuits — a matter that Judge Kuhl has yet to decide, according to a person familiar with the matter.
The case was selected as one of several bellwether cases for a trove of similar claims against social media players in recent years. It could intensify scrutiny of social media platforms at a time when many are already wary of technology’s impact on young people. Almost half of teenagers said they are online almost constantly, according to a 2024 Pew Research Center survey of US teenagers aged 13 to 17.
In a separate landmark case earlier this year, Meta and YouTube were ordered to pay $6 million after a jury found them were liable to create products that led to harmful and addictive behavior by young users.