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Meta settles, leaving Snapchat as sole defendant in high-profile youth social media addiction lawsuit

The company led by Mark Zuckerberg avoided legal action after reaching a settlement with the plaintiffs, who vow to "continue to hold tech companies accountable."

Meta Platforms

Meta Platforms. IllustrationAFP.

Alejandro Baños
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Alejandro Baños

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2 minutes read

Meta Platforms, Inc. reached an agreement with the plaintiffs to end its involvement in a high-profile lawsuit against social media companies in which Snap, Inc. is also a defendant.

Both companies, parent companies of Instagram and Snapchat, respectively, were accused of causing addiction among young people by several plaintiffs. The trial is scheduled to begin on November 4, at which point, following this ruling, Meta Platforms will no longer be among the defendants.

This Friday, one of the plaintiffs, an 18-year-old identified as KDB, reached a settlement with the company led by Mark Zuckerberg to settle the lawsuit. Last week, Meta Platforms reached a similar settlement with another plaintiff, 16-year-old SJ.

"We are pleased to have brought this case to a fair resolution for our client," said KDB's attorney, Emily Jeffcott, while promising to continue to "hold tech companies accountable."

As a direct result of this settlement, Zuckerberg and Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, will likely no longer appear in court, as originally planned.

Snap remains a defendant

It looks like the one who will testify is Evan Spiegel, CEO of Snap, unless he reaches a similar settlement with the plaintiffs.

If the trial proceeds as scheduled, it will begin with jury selection and preliminary hearings, which are set to take place between November 4 and mid-December.

This is not the first time that the parent companies of Instagram and Snapchat have been implicated in a lawsuit for causing addiction among young people.

A New Mexico jury had previously found Meta Platforms liable for harm to minors, resulting in a combined penalty of $942 million.

And in August, Zuckerberg's tech giant agreed to pay more than $18 billion in fines, in addition to making changes to Instagram and Facebook for teenagers, as part of a settlement with 52 state attorneys general several days after a trial began in California.

According to Mosseri, social media does not cause addiction; rather, users engage in "problematic use."

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