Snap Agrees to Settlement to Resolve Social Media Addiction Trial
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A major social media addiction trial in California state court may no longer be taking place.
On Monday, the maker of Snapchat finalized a settlement to resolve claims brought by two teens who said they developed serious mental health issues after using the popular app.
Meta, which owns Instagram and Facebook, was also set to be part of the trial but agreed to its own settlement last week as jury selection got underway.
What the Snap Settlement Means for Social Media Addiction Lawsuits
Snap’s decision to settle out of the upcoming trial means that it will no longer take place. That case was being closely followed as it was just one example of thousands of social media addiction lawsuits that have been filed in both federal and state courts.
These lawsuits claim that popular platforms like Instagram, YouTube and TikTok were designed to intentionally addict users and left teens and minors with devastating mental health conditions.
“In the past decade, Americans’ engagement with social media grew exponentially, nowhere more dramatically than among our country’s youth,” the master complaint for these lawsuits states. “That explosion in usage is no accident. It is the result of Defendants’ studied efforts to induce young people to compulsively use their products…”
With thousands of active lawsuits and more being filed, the progress of early trials was critical to help both sides get a better sense of the strength of these cases.
Earlier this year, the first individual social media lawsuit went to trial over claims by a then 19-year-old woman who developed mental health issues after using Instagram and YouTube from a young age. A jury ultimately sided with the woman, ordering Meta and Google to pay her a combined $6 million.
Verdicts can put pressure on defendants to agree to broader settlements in other cases rather than risk taking more to trial. While the social media giants have settled out of individual cases as they approach trial, a global settlement covering thousands of cases has not yet been reached.