TikTok settles hours before landmark social media addiction trial

Video sharing app TikTok has made an eleventh-hour deal to avoid a landmark US trial accusing it, along with Meta and YouTube, of addicting young people to social media. Photo / Patrick T. Fallon, AFP

Video-sharing app TikTok has made an 11th-hour deal to avoid a landmark US trial accusing it, with Meta and YouTube, of addicting young people to social media, lawyers have said.

The deal was made as jury selection was to begin in a Los Angeles court that could establish a legal precedent on whether social media companies deliberately designed their platforms to addict children.

The case being heard in the California state court is being called a “bellwether” proceeding because its outcome could set the tone for a tidal wave of similar litigation across the United States.

The remaining defendants in the suit are Alphabet and Meta, the tech titans behind YouTube and Instagram.

Meta co-founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg is slated to be called as a witness during the trial.

“The parties are pleased to have reached an amicable resolution of this dispute,” the Social Media Victims Law Center said, noting that the terms of the settlement with TikTok are confidential.

The case focuses on allegations that a 19-year-old woman identified by the initials K.G.M. suffered severe mental harm because she was addicted to social media.

After joining YouTube at age 6, Instagram at 11, Snapchat at 13, and TikTok at 14, the Californian claims to have developed an addiction to the sites that contributed to her depression, anxiety, body image issues and that stoked suicidal thoughts.

Social media firms are accused in hundreds of lawsuits of addicting young users to content that has led to depression, eating disorders, psychiatric hospitalisation and even suicide.

Lawyers for the plaintiffs are explicitly borrowing strategies used in the 1990s and 2000s against the tobacco industry, which faced a similar onslaught of lawsuits arguing that companies sold a harmful product.

The trial before Judge Carolyn Kuhl is expected to start next week after a jury is selected.

‘Significant victory’

“This is the first time that a social media company has ever had to face a jury for harming kids,” Social Media Victims Law Center founder Matthew Bergman, whose team is involved in more than 1000 such cases, told AFP.

The centre is a legal organisation dedicated to holding social media companies accountable for harms allegedly caused to young people online.

“The fact that now K.G.M. and her family get to stand in a courtroom equal to the largest, most powerful and wealthy companies in the world is, in and of itself, a very significant victory,” Bergman said.

Internet titans have argued that they are shielded by Section 230 of the US Communications Decency Act, which frees them of responsibility for what social media users post.

However, this case argues those firms are culpable for business models designed to hold people’s attention and to promote content that winds up harming their mental health.

“The allegations in these complaints are simply not true,” said Jose Castaneda, a YouTube spokesperson.

“Providing young people with a safer, healthier experience has always been core to our work,” he added.

Meta has also rejected the allegations.

TikTok’s settlement joins Snapchat, which last week confirmed that it made a deal to avoid the trial brought by K.G.M. The terms were not disclosed.

The companies face two other similar trials in the same court scheduled for later this year.

Lawsuits, including some brought by school districts, accusing social media platforms of practices endangering young users are also making their way through federal court in Northern California and state courts across the country.

- Agence France-Presse