Lawsuits Over Social Media Addiction Injuries Cleared To Move Forward in MDL

Meta and other social media companies must face wrongful death and personal injury lawsuits brought by families of teens who developed social media addictions, after a motion to dismiss was rejected.

The U.S. District Judge presiding over all social media addiction lawsuits has cleared the way for the litigation to move forward, after refusing to dismiss claims involving wrongful death and negligence brought by families of teens throughout the U.S. who have suffered devastating mental health injuries.

The owners of social media outlets like Facebook, Instagram and TikTok face nearly 1,500 lawsuits over social media addictions being pursued by individual families, school districts and communities nationwide, each raising similar allegations that the platforms are designed to be addictive to children.

Each complaint argues that the social media platforms were intentionally designed to manipulate and maximize user engagement, as part of a coordinated effort to addict teens to social media, resulting in destructive behavior, suicide, anxiety, depression, eating disorders and other long-term psychological damage for a generation of American teens.

Given common questions of fact and law raised in personal injury and wrongful death complaints brought throughout the federal court system, all social media teen addiction lawsuits were consolidated as part of a multidistrict litigation (MDL) in late 2022, centralizing the cases before U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers in the Northern District of California for coordinated discovery and pretrial proceedings.

To help manage the litigation and gauge how juries are likely to respond to certain evidence and testimony that will be repeated throughout the claims, Judge Rogers has indicated that several bellwether trials will be held involving both individual student injuries and claims brought by school districts, which have been left dealing with the costs associated with the teen mental health problems from social media. The first trial is expected to begin in 2026.

However, before those cases could be prepared, the social media companies attempted to have some, or all, of the claims dismissed. On February 28, Judge Rogers issued the fifth and final order (PDF) in a series of decisions addressing the defendants’ motions to dismiss.

Defendants had questioned whether plaintiffs could bring wrongful death lawsuits in several states: including Florida, Indiana, Virginia and Wyoming. However, Judge Rogers refused to throw the claims out, saying that any discrepancies could be handled during the MDL in relation to specific plaintiffs and their claims.

Judge Rogers also refused to dismiss negligence charges that exceed protections provided to the social media outlets by the First Amendment, noting that public policy leans toward the protection of children. 

“Public policy supports safeguarding child welfare, and courts have found intentional conduct interfering with the health of children plausibly breaches the duty of reasonable care,” Judge Rogers wrote in the 29 page decision. “That defendants allegedly knew the harmful consequences of their conduct, and maintained course, demonstrates blameworthy conduct further deviating from the standard of reasonable care. In essence, plaintiffs’ alleged duty of care, i.e., to avoid taking deliberate steps to cause harmful addictions, is within the realm of the basic principle that all actors should avoid imposing risks of unreasonable harm on others.”

While Judge Rogers’ decision does allow many of the challenged claims to move forward, she did dismiss certain claims accusing the companies of spreading child sexual assault materials, indicating the companies would have had to pre-screen all content before it goes up on their websites, which would have been “unworkable.”

Now that the litigation has been cleared to move ahead, Judge Rogers is likely to move forward with several bellwether trials, which are expected to begin in 2026, addressing individual student injuries and school district claims.

Although the outcome of these early trial dates will not have any binding impact on other lawsuits brought by individuals, communities or school districts, the average payouts awarded by the juries may impact the amount the companies may be required to pay in any social media settlements over the teen addiction problems.