This week marks the start of high-stakes legal battles against Meta, Snap, TikTok, and YouTube. The core claim? These platforms are intentionally addictive and have caused harm to young users. The cases, beginning with jury selection in Los Angeles, represent a novel legal strategy: treating social media features as defective products that inflict personal injury.
The Addictive Design Argument
Plaintiffs argue that social media companies engineered their apps to maximize engagement at all costs, much like the tobacco industry allegedly did with cigarettes. The lawsuits pinpoint specific features as deliberately addictive:
- Infinite scrolling: Keeps users passively consuming content without natural stopping points.
- Algorithmic recommendations: Serve up increasingly engaging content, trapping users in personalized loops.
- Push notifications: Trigger compulsive checking and immediate gratification.
- Autoplaying videos: Eliminate friction, ensuring continuous consumption.
The resulting addiction, plaintiffs contend, has led to a surge in mental health issues like depression, anxiety, eating disorders, and even self-harm, including suicide. The comparison to Big Tobacco cases is direct: both industries allegedly prioritized profits over user well-being, concealing known harms.
Why This Matters: A Potential Legal Avalanche
If even one plaintiff wins, it could trigger a flood of similar lawsuits from thousands of individuals, school districts, and state attorneys general. The legal precedent could force social media companies to fundamentally change how they design their platforms. This isn’t just about damages; it’s about holding tech giants accountable for the psychological toll of their products.
The trials will test whether courts recognize “addiction by design” as a legitimate legal claim. If so, the tech industry could face a wave of lawsuits that reshape its business model and regulatory landscape.
The outcome of these trials will set a critical precedent for how we regulate addictive technologies. The question is whether social media companies will be held liable for the harm their products inflict on users.
