Meta Faces Ongoing 'SNS Addiction' Lawsuit as Court Denies Dismissal Request

Meta, the operator of Facebook and Instagram, will not be able to avoid a lawsuit filed by 29 U.S. state governments regarding "social networking service (SNS) addiction."

Reuters Yonhap News

On June 29 (local time), Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California in Oakland denied Meta's request to dismiss the lawsuit filed by the attorneys general of 29 states, including California and Colorado.

The state governments initiated the lawsuit, alleging that Meta designed Facebook and Instagram to encourage compulsive use among teenagers and failed to adequately warn about the associated mental health risks. They argue that Meta has contributed to increased depression, anxiety, sleep disorders, disruption of studies and daily life, and self-harm risks among users. Meta countered that "SNS addiction" is not an officially recognized psychiatric disorder and claimed that its assertion that "SNS is not addictive" is not false.

Judge Rogers sided with the state governments on this issue. She deemed it reasonable for the states to interpret Meta's statements as meaning "Facebook and Instagram were not designed to induce compulsive use harmful to teenagers," and determined that this matter would be decided through the lawsuit moving forward.

The court also found that Meta did not properly comply with the notification and parental consent procedures required by the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). On this issue, the court granted summary judgment in favor of the state governments. Meta responded by stating it would present evidence of its long-standing efforts to protect teenage users.

The trial for this lawsuit is scheduled to begin on August 18. Separately, Judge Rogers is also presiding over a large-scale SNS harm lawsuit filed by individual users, local governments, and others against Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Snapchat, TikTok, and more. Recently, Meta has faced a series of unfavorable outcomes in similar lawsuits.

In the first "bellwether trial" held earlier at the Los Angeles court in California, Meta and Google were ordered to pay a total of $6 million in damages. In a lawsuit filed by the State of New Mexico, Meta was fined $375 million. Another case brought by a school district in Kentucky was settled for a total of $27 million, with Meta bearing the largest share at $9 million.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.