TikTok Pays To Avoid Second Social Media Addiction Trial In US
TikTok has settled a lawsuit brought by a 15 year old Florida teenager just weeks before the company was due to face a jury in a second landmark trial testing whether social media companies can be held responsible for harms allegedly caused by their products.
The teenager, identified in court filings only by his initials R.K.C., accused four major platforms of damaging his mental health. He had earlier reached a settlement agreement with YouTube on June 23, leaving Meta and Snapchat as the only remaining defendants in the trial scheduled to open on July 27 at the Los Angeles County Superior Court.
“We can confirm that a settlement in principle has been reached with TikTok,” law firm Morgan and Morgan, which represents the teenager, told AFP on Wednesday. The terms of the agreement were not disclosed, and TikTok did not immediately comment. According to court filings, R.K.C. began using social media at about the age of eight and claims that years of compulsive use contributed to anxiety, depression and suicidal thoughts for which he is still receiving treatment.
“These social media companies have been strategizing for years to hook children early and maximize their usage with insidious features like autoplay and infinite scroll, all with the aim of increasing profits at the expense of the mental health of our youth,” his lawyers at Morgan and Morgan said in a statement issued after the YouTube settlement.
The settlement follows a pattern that has defined this wave of litigation. TikTok also settled in January before the first bellwether trial of its kind, involving a young woman known as K.G.M., who argued that the attention grabbing design of the platforms, including heavy use of Instagram beauty filters, damaged her self worth as a teenager and led to body dysmorphia. Meta and Google chose to fight that case and lost. In March, a Los Angeles jury found both companies negligent in the design or operation of their platforms, ordering Meta to pay 4.2 million dollars and Google 1.8 million dollars, a combined 6 million dollar verdict. Both companies have said they intend to appeal, and a judge in June rejected their attempt to overturn the verdict.
The financial stakes extend well beyond individual plaintiffs. In May, Meta, Snap, TikTok and YouTube agreed to pay about 27 million dollars to a Kentucky school district to avoid a federal trial, a case widely viewed as a test for roughly 1,200 similar lawsuits filed by representatives of about 13,000 public schools nationwide. More than 3,300 addiction related lawsuits are pending in California state court, with another 2,600 cases brought by individuals, school districts, municipalities and states pending in California federal court.
Pressure is also building from state governments. More than thirty US states are suing Meta over similar allegations in a separate case that could go to trial in August in Oakland, while nearly every state in the country has filed its own lawsuit accusing the companies of misrepresenting the safety of their platforms for young users.
The companies have consistently denied the allegations, saying they take extensive steps to keep teenagers and young users safe. Legal observers note that confidential settlements allow platforms to resolve individual claims without admitting liability or exposing internal documents and executive testimony at trial. With Snap unsettled this time, its chief executive, Evan Spiegel, could testify in open court for the first time when the July trial begins before Judge Carolyn Kuhl, who also presided over the first case.