In recent years, several tech giants in the United States are facing an unprecedented legal challenge. With thousands of plaintiffs filing lawsuits, over six million internal documents and records of hundreds of executive testimonies are gradually being exposed in courts across America, targeting major social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, and YouTube. The plaintiffs accuse these companies of deliberately designing addictive algorithms and features that have led to psychological issues among teenagers like anxiety, depression, insomnia, eating disorders, and self-harm.
This collective lawsuit, brewing for over three years, has been described by lawyers as a “comprehensive legal siege on the social media industry.” The cases are currently being consolidated and processed in both state and federal courts in California to streamline the evidence collection process.
The first trial is scheduled for late January next year at the Superior Court of Los Angeles. The plaintiff is a 19-year-old woman from Chico, California, who claims to have been addicted to social media since childhood for over a decade, resulting in severe anxiety, depression, and body dysmorphia. Following this trial, two more cases are set to begin, with thousands of lawsuits waiting in line for their turn.
If successful, plaintiff attorneys believe these cases could result in settlements amounting to billions of dollars and compel the industry to change its operational strategies concerning underage users.
Joseph VanZandt, co-lead plaintiff attorney at Beasley Allen in Alabama, stated, “This is a story of big companies targeting a vulnerable group – children – for profit. We’ve seen this playbook with tobacco companies; they target teens and get them addicted from a young age.”
Matthew Bergman, founder of the Social Media Victims Law Center in Seattle, revealed in the documentary “Can’t Look Away: The Case Against Social Media” that internal documents from Meta showed the company knowingly made girls feel worse about themselves with their products, yet still promoted them to teenagers. He criticized this as “typical corporate malfeasance.”
In 2022, Bergman’s law firm filed the initial lawsuit accusing social media companies of intentionally designing addictive features (rather than solely due to third-party content issues) to circumvent the Communications Decency Act Section 230’s immunity protection for media. The first case involved the suicide of an 11-year-old girl in Connecticut and was later included in the federal consolidated lawsuit.
Currently, nearly 4,000 individual lawsuits nationwide have been consolidated, with over a quarter originating from Bergman’s firm. Additionally, over a thousand school districts and about three-quarters of state attorneys general have joined in support.
Previn Warren, attorney, described this as “the most iconic legal action of our generation,” noting that the court has acknowledged systemic errors on these platforms, and victims should be compensated. As the scale of evidence becomes public, the public will reassess their relationship with social media.
Pretrial evidence-gathering was completed in April this year, with the four major defendants submitting over six million documents and undergoing approximately 150 testimonies, including Mark Zuckerberg of Meta and Evan Spiegel of Snap. Most expert witnesses are expected to testify in the coming weeks before a ruling on summary judgment motions.
A YouTube spokesperson responded, stating the lawsuit “fundamentally misunderstands how YouTube operates,” emphasizing that the platform is a video streaming service and not a social media platform. Meta reiterated that they have implemented several measures to protect young users and will “vigorously defend themselves.” Snap and TikTok have not yet commented on the matter.
The federal case will be presided over by Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers in Oakland, California, with the first federal trial set for June next year in Kentucky. This legal battle, dubbed the “century lawsuit of the social media industry,” may reshape the relationship between tech companies and young users.