A social media addiction lawsuit that had been set to go to trial in late July 2026 was dropped after the plaintiff voluntarily dismissed his claims against Meta, leaving none of the major tech companies facing trial in the case.
The plaintiff, a Florida teenager identified by the initials “R.K.C.,” had sued Meta, TikTok, Google’s YouTube, and Snap, alleging the companies knowingly created addictive platforms. The bellwether jury trial had been scheduled to begin the following week in the Superior Court of California in Los Angeles. Meta said the plaintiff dropped the case without receiving any payment.
TikTok and YouTube had previously reached settlement agreements with the plaintiff. Snap confirmed a tentative settlement just one day before the case against Meta was dismissed, leaving Meta as the sole remaining defendant before the case was dropped entirely.
The lawsuit was one of thousands of similar cases filed by teens, schools, and state attorneys general accusing major tech companies of building platforms with engagement-driven features — such as infinite scroll and persistent notifications — that they knew to be addictive.
Meta had been prepared to argue that R.K.C. used Facebook and Instagram for only minutes per day on average, and intended to claim that most of his accounts were created after he retained legal counsel.
The dismissal follows recent courtroom losses for Meta. Earlier in 2026, a New Mexico court ordered Meta to pay $375 million in penalties after finding the company had misled consumers about platform safety and endangered children — its first courtroom defeat over social media harms. In March, a Los Angeles jury awarded a plaintiff roughly $6 million in damages in a separate case involving both Meta and Google.
The outcome of this case could have set precedents affecting how social media companies design their apps. Meta said in a statement: “this outcome makes clear that we will not back away from defending ourselves against baseless lawsuits.”
Source: TechCrunch