Snap Settles Lawsuit on Social Media Addiction, Avoiding a Landmark Trial
The New York Times • • business
Key Points:
- Snap has reached a settlement in a tech addiction lawsuit ahead of a landmark trial accusing social media companies of engineering products to addict young users, marking the first resolution in a series of similar cases against Meta, TikTok, and YouTube.
- The lawsuits, inspired by legal strategies used against Big Tobacco, claim that features like infinite scroll and auto-play have caused mental health issues such as depression, eating disorders, and self-harm among teenagers, seeking monetary damages and platform design changes.
- Snap's settlement was announced in a California court just before the trial involving a teenager plaintiff, K.G.M., but no financial details were disclosed, and the company remains a defendant in other related cases.
- These cases are pioneering a legal theory that
