A 15-year-old Florida teenager who sued Meta claiming addiction to Instagram has dropped his case, just days before it was set to go before a Los Angeles jury. The plaintiff, identified only by the initials R.K.C., had already settled similar claims against TikTok, Snapchat, and YouTube in recent weeks, all of which have been accused in a broad lawsuit of creating addictive platforms harmful to children.
His case was due to be the next in a series of trials that have already seen Meta and YouTube lose once. In that earlier trial, a jury found the companies liable for harming a young woman’s mental health and ordered them to pay $6mn (£4.4mn) in damages — the first time social media platforms had been held liable for their effects on users. Both companies have since appealed that verdict.
“A 15-year-old Florida boy has dropped his lawsuit against Meta claiming addiction to Instagram, days before trial.”
A Meta spokeswoman told the BBC: “The claims never held up, and this outcome makes clear that we will not back away from defending ourselves against baseless lawsuits.” She added that R.K.C. received no payment for dropping his claims.
Lawyers for the teenager, Emily Jeffcott and Rahul Ravipudi, said their client “came into this process wanting to hold social media companies accountable and push for changes to protect young people like himself”. But they noted concerns about a lengthy jury trial and said R.K.C. was “ready to close this chapter and focus on his recovery and engage in therapy as he aspires to have a normal life”.
R.K.C. had argued that common features such as infinite scroll and autoplay — which continuously and automatically show new content — drove compulsive use amounting to addiction, causing anxiety and sleep deprivation.
The Los Angeles Superior Court is overseeing hundreds of similar lawsuits. The next trial is scheduled to begin in October, according to court records. Across the US, thousands of lawsuits accuse Meta and other major platforms of harming young children. In May, Meta settled for an undisclosed amount with a school district that had sought $60mn in damages. That settlement came shortly after a New Mexico judge ordered Meta to pay $375mn for misleading users about the safety of its platforms for children.