YouTube, Snap settle school district’s social media addiction claims

By Diana Novak Jones and Nate Raymond

May 15 (Reuters) – Alphabet’s YouTube and Snap have reached settlements in the first case set for trial in litigation seeking to force social media platforms to cover the costs school districts incur to combat a youth mental health crisis they say the companies fueled.

The settlements were detailed in court filings on Friday in federal court in Oakland, California, and resolve claims by a Kentucky school district that is still due to take Facebook and Instagram parent Meta Platforms and TikTok to trial on June 15.

Terms of the settlements with Breathitt County School District in rural Eastern Kentucky were not disclosed. 

“This matter has been amicably resolved and our focus remains on building age-appropriate products and parental controls that deliver on that promise,” a YouTube spokesperson said in a statement.

Snap, the parent company of Snapchat, did not respond to a request for comment.

More than 3,300 lawsuits involving addiction claims are pending in California state court against the social media companies. Another 2,400 cases brought by individuals, municipalities, states and school districts have been centralized in California federal court.

In a landmark trial, a Los Angeles jury on March 25 found Meta and Alphabet’s Google negligent for designing social media platforms that are harmful to young people. It awarded a combined $6 million to a 20-year-old woman who said she became addicted to social media as a child.

The companies have denied the allegations and say they take extensive steps to keep teens and young users safe on their platforms.

Breathitt is one of more than a thousand school districts suing the social media companies over claims they caused a mental health crisis among students and then saddled schools with the fallout.

The school district has been seeking over $60 million to cover the costs of counteracting social media’s impact on students’ mental health and to fund a 15-year mental health program to abate the problem.

It also seeks a court order requiring the companies to modify their platforms to reduce addictive features.

Its case is a bellwether, or test case, for over a thousand similar school districts’ lawsuits.

Judges and attorneys often use bellwether verdicts to assess the potential value of remaining claims and guide settlement talks. Typically, several bellwether cases are tried before reaching a broader resolution.

(Reporting by Diana Novak Jones in Chicago and Nate Raymond in Boston; Editing by Tom Hogue)