Teen drops social media addiction lawsuit, but legal pressure on Meta keeps growing

• Trials are exhausting and stressful, especially for minors, which may explain why a 15-year-old New Jersey girl has withdrawn one of a series of suits at social media platforms.
• The case was supposed to be one of several bellwether trials testing thousands of similar claims — and is the second such case to be withdrawn shortly before trial.
• But the larger legal assault on social media companies is far from collapsing: an earlier plaintiff won $6 million from Meta and YouTube, more than 3,300 individual cases remain consolidated in California, and Meta is simultaneously fighting lawsuits brought by states.

The youthful plaintiff, identified in court papers only as P. M-Y., had accused Meta Platforms, Google and Snap of contributing to her social media addiction, depression and self-harm through Instagram, YouTube and Snapchat.

The companies said the lawsuit was dismissed Thursday without any payment to the girl. TikTok, another original defendant, had previously settled her claims, according to Insurance Journal.

The teen was represented by Attorney Emily Jeffcott of the law firm Morgan & Morgan, which describes itself as "America's largest injury law firm." She said the teenager decided she wanted to put the litigation behind her and resume her life.

She had begun the case in an effort to hold social media companies accountable and seek changes protecting other young people, Jeffcott said in a statement reported by Reuters. Jeffcott did not immediately respond to a request for comment from ConsumerNews.ai.

The dismissal is significant because P. M-Y.'s lawsuit wasn't just another case among thousands.

It had been selected as one of three bellwether cases scheduled for trial in October from more than 3,300 personal-injury lawsuits consolidated in Los Angeles Superior Court.

Bellwether trials are essentially legal test runs. Lawyers on both sides use their outcomes to see how juries react to evidence and arguments and to help determine whether thousands of other cases should be tried, settled or abandoned.

Another teen also walked away

The New Jersey girl's withdrawal is the second time this summer that a highly anticipated social media addiction trial has disappeared shortly before reaching a jury.

In July, another teenage plaintiff dropped his remaining claims against Meta after reaching settlements with other social media companies. Meta said there was no settlement payment in that case either, The Wall Street Journal reported.

That leaves two other cases involving teenage plaintiffs scheduled for October, according to Reuters. TikTok has already settled its part of those cases.

For families watching the litigation, the withdrawals demonstrate one of the complications of turning broad concerns about social media into individual damage claims.

The companies can examine a plaintiff's medical history, social media usage and other potential causes of depression, anxiety or other problems and argue that their products weren't responsible.

Meta did exactly that in the New Jersey case.

The company said P. M-Y. had a significant mental health condition that existed before her social media use and argued that many other cases follow the same pattern. Meta said it would continue vigorously defending itself.

YouTube said the dismissal supported its contention that it offers young users safe, age-appropriate experiences and strong parental controls. Snap said it continues to strengthen safety, privacy and well-being protections.

But a jury has already sided with a social media user

The defendants have considerably more to contend with than withdrawn cases.

In March, a California jury sided with a 20-year-old woman who said she became addicted to Instagram and YouTube while she was a child and that the platforms worsened her mental health problems.

Jurors found Meta and YouTube negligent and concluded their conduct substantially contributed to her injuries.

They awarded $3 million in compensatory damages and another $3 million in punitive damages — $4.2 million attributed to Meta and $1.8 million to Google, Reuters reported.

The plaintiff argued that features including infinite scroll, autoplay, notifications and reward systems had been intentionally engineered to keep young users engaged.

The jury also found that Meta and YouTube had acted with malice, oppression or fraud, allowing punitive damages to be assessed, according to a blog post by Morgan & Morgan.

Jeffcott, the attorney representing the New Jersey teenager whose case was just withdrawn, was also part of the Morgan & Morgan trial team that represented the successful plaintiff in that case. Morgan & Morgan says it represents more than 1,000 people alleging physical or psychological injury associated with social media addiction.

Thousands of cases remain

The larger legal fight has also recently survived an important challenge.

On Aug. 10, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected an effort by Meta, Google, TikTok and other social media companies to halt more than 3,000 lawsuits alleging that their products were deliberately designed to be addictive to children.

The companies had argued in part that Section 230 — the federal law that generally protects internet companies from liability for material posted by their users — should shield them from the lawsuits.

The appeals court declined to stop the litigation, although it did not rule on the ultimate merits of the claims.

That distinction could become increasingly important.

Many of the lawsuits are not primarily claiming that social media companies should be liable because a third party posted harmful material. Instead, plaintiffs are attacking the design of the products themselves — features such as infinite scrolling, recommendation systems, notifications and other mechanisms they say encourage compulsive use.

That theory attempts to treat social media addiction more like a product-design case than a traditional dispute over online speech.

States are attacking from another direction

Individual plaintiffs aren't the only ones taking social media companies to court.

Meta this week began defending itself in federal court in Oakland against claims from 29 states that Facebook and Instagram were designed in ways that addict children and that the company misrepresented the safety of its products.

California, Colorado, Kentucky and New Jersey are leading the case. Meta denies the allegations.

Another case brought by Tennessee is underway in state court.

And Meta has already suffered a major defeat in New Mexico, where a court this month ordered the company to pay hundreds of millions of dollars following findings involving children's mental health and online sexual exploitation.

Taken together, the cases pose a much broader question than whether one teenager can prove that Instagram, TikTok or YouTube caused a particular mental health problem.

Courts are increasingly being asked to decide whether some of the basic techniques that made social media enormously successful — endlessly refreshed feeds, algorithmic recommendations, alerts and other engagement tools — can themselves constitute dangerously designed products when used by children.

The New Jersey teenager's decision means one jury won't get the chance to answer that question this fall.

Thousands of other plaintiffs — and dozens of states — are still asking it.