Snap, the parent company of social media platform Snapchat has reached a settlement agreement in a major social media addiction lawsuit, avoiding what would have been the first trial testing claims that tech platforms deliberately designed products to addict young users.
The New York Times reports that the Snap settlement was announced during a hearing at California Superior Court in Los Angeles County on Tuesday, just one week before the scheduled start of what was expected to be a groundbreaking trial. The case represents the first of several social media addiction lawsuits scheduled for trial this year against major tech companies including Meta, Snap, TikTok and YouTube.
The lawsuit was brought by a teenager identified in court documents as K.G.M., who alleged that she developed an addiction to social media applications, resulting in significant mental health problems. Financial terms and other details of the settlement were not disclosed during the court hearing.
While Snap reached an agreement with the plaintiff, no settlements were announced for the other defendants in the case, which include Meta, TikTok and YouTube. Snap, despite being smaller than the other three companies named in the lawsuit, remains a defendant in numerous other social media addiction cases currently pending in courts across the country.
The lawsuits follow a legal strategy that mirrors tactics previously employed against Big Tobacco companies decades ago. Thousands of teenagers, school districts and state attorneys general have filed legal actions accusing social media companies of causing personal injury and other harms to young users. The plaintiffs argue that specific design features, including infinite scroll capabilities, automatic video playback and algorithmic content recommendations, were intentionally created to encourage compulsive social media use. They further contend that this excessive use has led to serious mental health consequences among young people, including depression, eating disorders and self-harm behaviors.
Those bringing the lawsuits are seeking both monetary compensation for damages and mandatory changes to how social media platforms are designed, with the goal of reducing excessive usage among young people. The cases are being watched closely because they represent the first legal challenges to argue a novel theory that social media platforms are inherently defective products subject to personal injury liability. If the plaintiffs succeed in proving that tech companies created defective products that injured millions of young American users, these bellwether cases could establish new forms of legal liability for the technology industry.
State governments and school districts involved in the litigation also plan to argue that they have been forced to bear significant costs for mental health counseling and other support services necessitated by social media addiction among students and young residents.
Read more at the New York Times here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship.
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