Google decided to settle a social media lawsuit
A 15-year-old from Florida referred to by his initials R.K.C. filed a lawsuit against four major social media platform operators, Google’s YouTube, Meta’s Instagram, Snap’s Snapchat, and ByteDance’s TikTok, claiming that the platforms damaged his mental health. The teenager claims that ever since he started using social media at eight-years-old, deliberate design features like Instagram’s infinite scroll and YouTube’s autoplay feature got him addicted, leading to worsened mental health outcomes that included suicidal thoughts.
The rest of the defendants have not yet settled, meaning that they can still face trial when it begins at the end of next month. The terms of Google’s settlement are confidential, per Reuters.
“For more than a decade, we’ve built YouTube responsibly — working with families to give young people safer, more helpful experiences online,” Google spokesperson José Castañeda told Gizmodo in a statement. “This matter has been amicably resolved and our focus remains on building age-appropriate products and parental controls that deliver on that promise.”
R.K.C.’s case closely mirrors another bellwether case that went to trial in California earlier this year. In that case, now 20-year-old K.G.M. sued Google, ByteDance, Snap and Meta for deliberate addictive design choices that worsened mental health problems like depression, anxiety, body dysmorphia, and thoughts of self-harm.
In that case, Snap and ByteDance settled, while Google and Meta took to court. The bellwether trial ended in late March in K.G.M.’s favor, with the jury finding the platforms liable and ordering them to pay $6 million in damages.
That verdict opened the floodgates to further social media-related litigation. Until that point, social media platforms were relieved of liability for damages done by third-party content posted on their platforms, under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. K.G.M.’s lawyers successfully argued that while third-party posts may have triggered mental health issues, any potential harm was significantly exacerbated by the addictive design features that these platform operators deliberately put in place to maximize engagement and profit.
The settlements have been steadily coming since then. Last month, Meta, Snap, ByteDance and Google all settled with a Kentucky school district that said the companies’ social media platforms had created a burden on the school system by messing up the mental health of school-aged children.
Meta has also responded by expanding content safety restrictions for its Teen Accounts meant for under-16 users.
But there are more than 3,300 other similar social media addiction lawsuits in California state courts alone, and large national firms are already recruiting more clients—ironically enough on Meta’s own social media platforms. So this issue is bound to continue being a thorn in the side of major social media operators.
Meanwhile, regulatory momentum is shifting worldwide, with countries increasingly passing stricter social media regulations and bans meant to protect minors from the harms of social media addiction. The movement started with Australia back in December, and since then has grown to include dozens of governments around the globe, from Malaysia to Brazil. Just last week, the United Kingdom announced a ban of its own meant to be even stricter than the Australian ban that has become a blueprint for other nations.
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