{"id":563159,"date":"2026-07-22T20:54:08","date_gmt":"2026-07-22T20:54:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/563159\/"},"modified":"2026-07-22T20:54:08","modified_gmt":"2026-07-22T20:54:08","slug":"us-teen-suing-meta-over-mental-health-issues-drops-claims","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/563159\/","title":{"rendered":"US teen suing Meta over mental health issues drops claims"},"content":{"rendered":"

A teenager whose lawsuit \u2060claimed Meta’s platforms were to blame for his depression and anxiety dropped his case against the company just days before the trial in Los Angeles was set to start, his attorneys said.<\/p>\n

The legal case, brought by a 15-year-old boy from Florida known as R.K.C., originally named four defendants, Google’s YouTube, Meta’s Instagram, Snap Inc’s Snapchat and ByteDance’s \u200cTikTok, but YouTube \u2060and TikTok settled in June.<\/p>\n

The terms of those settlements were confidential.<\/p>\n

Bloomberg reported on Monday that Snap Inc had reached a tentative settlement in the case.<\/p>\n

R.K.C., who started using social media when he was about eight, said he \u200cbecame addicted to it, losing sleep and suffering from depression and anxiety, according to court \u2060filings.<\/p>\n

“In light of the overall successful result of the \u200clitigation and his concerns about enduring a grueling weeks-long trial, \u2060he \u200chas elected to withdraw his claims against Meta,” attorneys for R.K.C. said in a statement.<\/p>\n

“He\u2019s ready to close this chapter and focus on his recovery and \u2060engage in therapy as he aspires to have a normal life.”<\/p>\n

Read more: Meta, Google found liable in social media addiction trial<\/a><\/p>\n

A spokesperson \u2060for Meta said in a statement R.K.C. had dropped the claims without receiving any payment.<\/p>\n

“The claims never held up, and this outcome makes clear that we will not back away from defending ourselves against baseless lawsuits,” the company said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A teenager whose lawsuit \u2060claimed Meta’s platforms were to blame for his depression and anxiety dropped his case…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":563160,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[103,61,60,410,411],"class_list":["post-563159","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mental-health","tag-health","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-mental-health","tag-mentalhealth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/563159","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=563159"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/563159\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/563160"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=563159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=563159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=563159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}