Google's YouTube has settled a social media addiction lawsuit brought by a 15-year-old in Florida, becoming the latest tech giant to avoid trial over claims that platforms are deliberately engineered to hook children.
The teenager, identified only as R.K.C. in court documents, alleged that YouTube and other social media firms designed their platforms to be addictive, using features such as infinite scroll and autoplay to drive compulsive use that led to anxiety and sleep deprivation.
“YouTube settles social media addiction case with 15-year-old; trial against Meta, TikTok, Snap set for July.”
“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 still suing Instagram-parent Meta, TikTok, and Snap Inc in a trial set to begin on 27 July in Los Angeles. The case is the second in a series overseen by Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Carolyn Kuhl, who is working through more than 1,000 similar lawsuits filed in California.
The first bellwether trial ended earlier this year with a landmark verdict: a jury awarded a 20-year-old California woman, known as K.G.M., $6m (£4.5m) after finding Meta and YouTube liable for the mental health effects of their platforms. Snap and TikTok had settled before that trial for undisclosed sums. In the same week, a New Mexico jury ordered Meta to pay $375m for misleading users about the safety of its platforms for children.
“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,” said R.K.C.'s attorneys John Morgan and Emily Jeffcott in a statement.
Google maintained that it has built YouTube “responsibly - working with families to give young people safer, more helpful experiences online” for more than a decade, and pointed to YouTube Kids, a child-focused version launched in 2015.
The settlement comes after Google last month also resolved a separate case brought by a Kentucky school district that accused YouTube, Meta, Snap and TikTok of creating a mental health crisis for its students. All the companies chose to settle rather than go to trial. The district had sought changes to allegedly addictive features and compensation for the costs schools incurred helping children cope.