Snap settles California lawsuit accusing app of causing social media addiction

Days ahead of a scheduled trial, Snap has reached a settlement in a lawsuit accusing the company of causing social media addiction, the New York Times said. The settlement was announced Tuesday in the California Superior Court in Los Angeles County, according to the outlet. The suit was brought by a 19-year-old identified in court documents as K.G.M., who alleged the app’s algorithms and features caused addiction and mental health issues.

The terms of the settlement were not disclosed. The lawsuit also names Meta, YouTube and TikTok; no settlement has been reached with those platforms. Plaintiffs in this and related cases have pointed to internal documents showing Snap employees raised concerns about risks to teen mental health going back at least nine years, though the company has said those examples were "cherry-picked" and taken out of context.

Plaintiffs have compared the litigation to 1990s Big Tobacco suits, and allege features such as infinite scroll, auto video play and algorithmic recommendations have driven continuous use and harmed users, according to the NYT. Companies have defended such design choices as akin to editorial decisions protected by the First Amendment.

Snap remains a defendant in other similar cases. Snap CEO Evan Spiegel had been scheduled to testify in the trial, which would have been the first time a social media company faced a jury in an addiction lawsuit; no platform has lost such a case at trial yet.

Key Topics

Tech, Snap, California Superior Court, Evan Spiegel, Meta, Tiktok