Report from the Wall Street Journal
In Brief – A Florida teenager suing social-media companies over claims that their platforms contributed to his mental health problems has dropped his lawsuit against Meta, leading to the cancellation of the second “bellwether” trial of individual plaintiffs alleging that giant social media platforms knowingly created addictive, harmful services. The plaintiff, identified in court records as R.K.C., had previously reached confidential financial settlements with TikTok, Snap, and YouTube, leaving Meta as the sole remaining defendant. Meta, which said the case was dismissed without any payment to the plaintiff, noted that R.K.C. had used Facebook and Instagram for fewer than 10 minutes a day on average and had opened the accounts only six months before filing his lawsuit. The case was one of more than 3,000 consolidated lawsuits against Meta and the other social media giants in the California courtroom of Judge Carolyn Kuhl. Earlier this year, in the first bellwether trial, a jury found Meta and YouTube liable in a case involving a young woman’s psychological harm, while Snap and TikTok settled before that trial.
Context – The charge that social media platforms are “addictive” is highly debatable, but it’s all the rage. In the US, plaintiffs and government officials focus on features like autoplay and push notifications as part of a legal strategy to circumvent Sec. 230, the federal law that protects platforms from liability for third-party content. In Europe, the EU Commission likewise targets social media platform features in their Digital Services Act (DSA) investigations of Meta and TikTok to avoid charges that the DSA regulates online speech. Several US states have enacted laws in recent years regulating the same set of platform features. Most have been blocked by federal judges for violating the First Amendment, although that trend is wavering as circuit court appeals panels wave away court precedents on First Amendment protections for teens. In parallel with efforts to directly regulate how the social media platforms operate, many countries, and US states, are following Australia’s lead and proposing a social media age limit.