Social media companies are facing an unprecedented wave of legal challenges in the United States, with four major cases heading toward trial in the next year that could fundamentally alter how platforms operate and who they are accountable to.
“It’s created a stage that not only legal observers are watching, but regulators and lawmakers are watching closely as well,” Eric Talley, a lawyer and professor at Columbia Law School, said. Talley said the growing wave of lawsuits is influencing public perception and could affect political elections and new laws for years.
“There’s no denying anymore that there is an issue with child safety on the platforms,” Alexis Shore Ingber, a communications law expert and professor at Syracuse University, said. “We are seeing an inflection point. These cases are significant.”
The largest case moving through the courts is a multidistrict litigation in California that includes allegations from more than 1,000 school districts. The schools accuse Instagram, YouTube, Snapchat, and TikTok of being intentionally designed to be addictive, which has allegedly harmed children mentally and emotionally. They claim the platforms should be deemed a “public nuisance” and be held liable for the costs schools have incurred dealing with the effects. A jury trial for certain school district claims is set to begin in February, after the platforms recently settled with one school district that was to be the first trial.
A spokesman for YouTube said: “The allegations in these complaints are simply not true.” A spokeswoman for Snapchat said: “We fundamentally disagree with the allegations – we do not target schools.” Meta declined to comment, and TikTok did not respond to a request for comment.
In a separate case, attorneys for California and Colorado, leading a group of 29 states, filed a lawsuit against Meta and Instagram in 2023, accusing the company of violating the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), a federal law enacted in 2000 that was intended to protect children under 13 from being targeted by businesses online. The trial is set for August 2026. Meta has provided more than 2 million documents in the case, according to court records. If the states prevail, they are demanding that Meta better prevent users under 13 from using its platforms, remove data it has collected from underage users, and make other changes. Meta uses such data for ad targeting and training its artificial intelligence tools.
A third case targets gaming-focused platforms Roblox and Discord. A 13-year-old boy in San Mateo, California, claims he was groomed and solicited through both platforms by an adult sexual predator who was subsequently arrested for crimes against more than two dozen children. The lawsuit argues both platforms were defectively designed and engaged in false marketing about safety for young users. Roblox and Discord tried to move the case to arbitration, but the court refused; the case is on hold pending their appeal. Should they lose the appeal, the case could go to trial later this year. A spokeswoman for Discord declined to comment; a representative for Roblox did not respond.
Not all cases focus on children. Dr. Andrew Forrest, an Australian billionaire, sued Meta in California in 2022 over the company’s alleged failure to combat scam advertisements that tricked Australians into fake investments using his name and likeness. Forrest is asking the court to find that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, a 1996 law that broadly immunizes platforms from liability for content posted by users, cannot be used as a defense by Meta. If the court sides with Forrest, it could upend decades of legal protections for online platforms. A spokesman for Meta declined to comment.
The lawsuits come after notable verdicts earlier this year. A jury ordered Meta and YouTube to pay a combined $6 million (£4.5 million) to a young woman who said she was addicted as a child to social media, contributing to her mental health struggles. Both companies said they disagreed with the verdict and intend to appeal. Meta also lost a case brought by the state of New Mexico, which argued the company misled the public about the safety of its platforms for children. Meta said it also plans to appeal.
The wave of litigation is being watched closely by legal experts and policymakers. Adam J. Schwartz, a lawyer who founded an online document review tool, said the cases “are the bellwether cases that will set the tone and tenor for shaping the law in the future.”
Because the major social platforms are headquartered in California, laws and legal changes there often spread nationwide, a pattern known as the “California effect.” Between this year and next, Meta and other platforms are expected to face multiple more trials where juries could consider claims by young users, parents, school districts, and state attorneys.
Broad changes to how platforms are designed, how they function, and how they are accessed could take years more and require additional court rulings against them, according to the report.