{"id":706137,"date":"2026-07-23T00:05:10","date_gmt":"2026-07-23T00:05:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/706137\/"},"modified":"2026-07-23T00:05:10","modified_gmt":"2026-07-23T00:05:10","slug":"us-teen-drops-meta-lawsuit-on-social-media-addiction-days-before-trial-meta","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/706137\/","title":{"rendered":"US teen drops Meta lawsuit on social media addiction days before trial | Meta"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Florida<\/a> teen whose lawsuit claimed Meta<\/a>\u2019s platforms were to blame \u2060for his depression \u2060and anxiety \u200bdropped his case against the company just days before the trial in Los Angeles<\/a> was \u2060set to start, his attorneys said on Wednesday. It was the latest in a massive series of high-stakes lawsuits against social media companies for allegedly designing addictive products that lead to the harm of children.<\/p>\n

The lawsuit, brought by a 15-year-old boy known as \u2060RKC, originally named four defendants, Google\u2019s YouTube, Meta\u2019s Instagram, Snap Inc\u2019s \u200bSnapchat and ByteDance\u2019s TikTok<\/a>. YouTube and TikTok \u200csettled in June and Snap reached a tentative settlement in the case, Bloomberg \u200creported<\/a> on Monday. The terms of those settlements were confidential.<\/p>\n

RKC, who started using social media when he was about eight, said he became addicted to it, losing sleep and suffering from depression and anxiety, according \u200cto court filings.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn light of the overall successful result of the litigation and his concerns about \u200benduring a grueling weeks-long trial, he has elected to withdraw his claims against Meta<\/a>,\u201d attorneys for RKC said in a statement. \u201cHe\u2019s ready to close this chapter and focus on his recovery \u2060and engage in therapy as he aspires to have a \u200bnormal life.\u201d<\/p>\n

A \u200bspokesperson for Meta said RKC had dropped the claims \u200bwithout receiving \u200cany payment.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe claims \u200bnever held \u200bup,\u201d the company said in a statement. This outcome makes clear that we will not back away from defending ourselves against baseless lawsuits.\u201d<\/p>\n

The dropped case comes after Meta and YouTube suffered a bruising loss<\/a> in March in the same Los Angeles court. That trial lasted six weeks and ended with the two companies being ordered to pay a young woman $6m in damages. In the landmark decision, the jury found Meta and YouTube liable<\/a> for deliberately designing addictive products and negligent for having failed to provide adequate warnings about the potential dangers of their platforms.<\/p>\n

In a separate lawsuit in March brought by New Mexico\u2019s attorney general, a jury ordered Meta to pay $375m in civil penalties<\/a> over claims that it misled consumers about the safety of its platforms and enabled harm, including child sexual exploitation, against its users. The back-to-back verdicts are the first ever to find social media companies liable for how their products affect young people.<\/p>\n

These cases were the first to go to court, and are slated to be followed by more trials from two coordinated groups of more than 2,000 plaintiffs, including families, school districts and state attorneys general, who have brought lawsuits against Meta, YouTube, TikTok and Snap.<\/p>\n

The four social media companies also settled another major lawsuit<\/a> just before trial in May, brought by a school district in Kentucky over similar claims of addictive products leading to harm in children.<\/p>\n

This month, Meta appealed the verdict in its loss at the Los Angeles<\/a> court. It challenged the jury\u2019s decision that found the company liable for designing addictive products to hook in young people.<\/p>\n

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Meta and the other social media companies have vigorously defended their business models, saying their products aren\u2019t addictive. In a post<\/a> on Wednesday, Andy Stone, Meta\u2019s communications director, wrote that RKC\u2019s claims \u201cnever held up\u201d and that he \u201caveraged just minutes a day on Facebook and Instagram\u201d.<\/p>\n

Lawyers for RKC said they achieved what they set out to do by bringing awareness to social media\u2019s alleged harms.<\/p>\n

\u201cRKC came into this process wanting to hold social media companies accountable and push for changes to protect young people like himself,\u201d the lawyers said. \u201cHe did that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Reuters contributed reporting<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Florida teen whose lawsuit claimed Meta\u2019s platforms were to blame \u2060for his depression \u2060and anxiety \u200bdropped his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":706138,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[84,59,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-706137","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-gb","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/706137","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=706137"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/706137\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/706138"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=706137"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=706137"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=706137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}