Snap settles with two teens in trial, claiming social media caused depression and eating disorders

Snap Inc, parent company of Snapchat, has reached a settlement in a lawsuit over claims filed by two teenagers who say the company designed the platform to be addictive, causing their depression, anxiety and eating disorders, attorneys for the plaintiffs said Monday.

Jury selection began last week for the trial, the second in a Los Angeles state court involving complaints filed by young people who say they became addicted to social media after Snap, Meta Platforms, TikTok and Alphabet’s YouTube designed their platforms to encourage compulsive use.

The plaintiffs had already settled with Meta, TikTok and YouTube.

“Our ultimate goal is to hold these social media companies accountable for how their actions have impacted millions of children across the country, and these settlements allow us to continue moving toward that goal,” John Morgan and Emily Jeffcott, attorneys for plaintiff KDB, said in a statement.

The trial was expected to be Snap’s first in the broad litigation over the impact of social media on teens, after the company settled other cases that were set to go to trial. The company’s chief executive, Evan Spiegel, was scheduled to testify.

The case was selected from thousands of pending lawsuits as a bellwether intended to test claims against Snap and other companies and potentially influence how similar cases are resolved. The next trials are expected to begin in March, according to the plaintiffs’ lawyers.

A Snap spokesperson said in a statement that the company has implemented safeguards, launched security tutorials and collaborated with experts, and remains committed to “continually strengthening the safety, privacy and well-being of our community.”

Plaintiffs SJ, a 16-year-old from Illinois, and KDB, an 18-year-old from Mississippi, say they began using YouTube at age 3 and other platforms around age 9, developing compulsive habits they attribute to features like autoplay and infinite scrolling.

The companies have rejected allegations that their platforms were designed to addict young people and say they have taken steps to make their apps safe places for young people to express themselves.

Social media companies face thousands of lawsuits in federal and state courts from individuals, school districts, municipalities and other government entities, alleging that the companies knowingly sought to addict children to their platforms, thereby contributing to a youth mental health crisis involving anxiety, depression and suicide.

In the first case to go to trial, which concluded in March, a Los Angeles jury found that Meta and YouTube were negligent and awarded a young woman $6 million in damages.

The next two teens whose cases were selected for trial either settled their claims against the companies or dropped their claims.

The first school district chosen for the trial settled with all the companies.

In August, Meta reached settlements worth up to $18 billion with nearly every U.S. state and territory to resolve lawsuits filed by attorneys general over allegations that its platforms harmed teens and agreed to make changes to how Instagram and Facebook work for teens. The deal conditioned $5 billion of the payment on states reaching similar settlements with Snap, TikTok and YouTube.