Google’s YouTube has settled a social media addiction lawsuit brought by a 15-year-old Florida teenager, in a fresh legal blow for online platforms accused of fuelling a youth mental health crisis.
The teenager, identified in court documents only by the initials R.K.C., alleged that YouTube and other social media firms designed their platforms to be addictive. Features like infinite scroll and autoplay drove compulsive use that led to anxiety and sleep deprivation, his lawyers said.
“YouTube settled a lawsuit from a teenager alleging addictive features caused mental harm, while he continues to sue other platforms.”
“This matter has been amicably resolved and our focus remains on building age-appropriate products and parental controls that deliver on that promise,” Google spokesman José Castañeda said in a statement.
R.K.C. is not done with the tech industry. He is also suing Instagram-parent Meta, TikTok and Snap Inc in a trial set to begin on 27 July in Los Angeles. That case will be overseen by Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Carolyn Kuhl, who is handling a series of bellwether trials designed to resolve more than 1,000 similar cases piled up in California courts.
The first such trial took place earlier this year. A 20-year-old California woman, known as K.G.M., accused Meta and YouTube of intentionally designing platforms to be addictive to young users. She had also sued Snap and TikTok, but both settled before trial for an undisclosed sum. A jury awarded K.G.M. $6m (£4.5m) – the first time a court found Meta and YouTube liable for the mental health effects of their platforms. The same week, a jury in New Mexico ordered Meta to pay $375m for misleading users about the safety of its platforms for children.
R.K.C.’s claims echo those of K.G.M., according to court documents. His attorneys, John Morgan and Emily Jeffcott, said in a statement: “As jurors saw in the first bellwether trial, leadership at these social media companies have been strategizing for years to hook children early and maximize their usage.”
Google defended its record, telling the BBC it had built YouTube “responsibly – working with families to give young people safer, more helpful experiences online” for more than a decade. The platform launched YouTube Kids, a version designed and curated for children, in 2015.
Last month, Google settled another case that was heading to trial, in which a Kentucky school district accused YouTube, Meta, Snap and TikTok of creating a mental health crisis for its students. All of the companies opted to settle rather than go to trial.
Now all eyes are on July’s trial in Los Angeles, where R.K.C. will take on the remaining three tech giants – and where Judge Kuhl and the jury will once again weigh whether the engineers of digital addiction should be held accountable.