{"id":778992,"date":"2026-07-23T01:56:19","date_gmt":"2026-07-23T01:56:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/778992\/"},"modified":"2026-07-23T01:56:19","modified_gmt":"2026-07-23T01:56:19","slug":"teen-suing-meta-over-mental-health-harms-drops-his-claims-days-before-trial","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/778992\/","title":{"rendered":"Teen suing Meta over mental health harms drops his claims days before trial"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A Florida teen whose lawsuit claimed <a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2026\/07\/07\/business\/meta-says-its-facing-1-4t-in-penalties-in-teen-mental-health-case-sum-equal-to-tech-giants-valuation\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Meta\u2019s\u00a0platforms were to blame for his depression and anxiety<\/a> dropped his case against the company just days before the trial in Los Angeles was set to start,\u00a0his attorneys said Wednesday.<\/p>\n<p>The lawsuit, brought by a 15-year-old boy known as R.K.C., originally named four defendants, Google\u2019s YouTube, Meta\u2019s\u00a0Instagram, Snap\u2019s Snapchat and ByteDance\u2019s TikTok, but YouTube and TikTok settled in June.<\/p>\n<p>Bloomberg reported on Monday that Snap had reached a tentative settlement in the case.<\/p>\n<p><img style=\"aspect-ratio:1.49926794;display:block\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" data-modal-image=\"40059727\" width=\"885\" height=\"590\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/2026-zuckerberg-testified-difficult-enforce-131954475_f07c0f.jpg\" alt=\"Mark Zuckerberg exiting Los Angeles Superior Court.\" class=\"wp-image-40059727\"  \/>A Florida teen whose lawsuit claimed Meta\u2019s\u00a0platforms were to blame for his depression and anxiety dropped his case against Mark Zuckerberg\u2019s company. Bloomberg via Getty Images<\/p>\n<p>R.K.C., who started using social media when he was about 8, said he became addicted to it, losing sleep and suffering from depression and anxiety, according to court filings.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn light of the overall successful result of the litigation and his concerns about enduring a grueling weeks-long trial, he has elected to withdraw his claims against Meta,\u201d attorneys for R.K.C. said in a statement. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe\u2019s ready to close this chapter and focus on his recovery and engage in therapy as he aspires to have a normal life.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>A spokesperson for Meta said in a statement R.K.C. had dropped the claims without receiving any payment.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe claims never held up, and this outcome makes clear that we will not back away from defending ourselves against baseless lawsuits,\u201d the company said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Florida teen whose lawsuit claimed Meta\u2019s\u00a0platforms were to blame for his depression and anxiety dropped his case&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":778993,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[60],"tags":[9038,28,10414,97,4136,12424,259,260,1282,5599,172],"class_list":["post-778992","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mental-health","tag-addiction","tag-business","tag-facebook","tag-health","tag-instagram","tag-mark-zuckerberg","tag-mental-health","tag-mentalhealth","tag-meta","tag-public-health","tag-tech"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/778992","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=778992"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/778992\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/778993"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=778992"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=778992"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=778992"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}