Snap settles teen harm lawsuit over Snapchat’s addictive features
Snap avoids a courtroom showdown, but the battle over social media harm is just getting started.
Snapchat. By Shutterstock
Follow us
- Snap settled a lawsuit by two teenagers who claimed Snapchat features harmed their mental health.
- The teens said autoplay, infinite scrolling, and Snapstreaks drove compulsive use from age 9.
- Snap denied designing Snapchat to addict young users and cited safeguards and safety programs.
- Thousands of similar social media harm cases remain, with next bellwether trials scheduled for March 2027.
Key Takeaways by nexos.ai, reviewed by Cybernews staff.
Snap, the parent company of Snapchat, has reached a settlement in a lawsuit brought by two teenagers who accused the company of designing addictive features, thereby contributing to their depression, anxiety, and eating disorders.
Two teenagers, a 16-year-old girl from Illinois and an 18-year-old from Mississippi, claim to have been using Snapchat since the age of 9. Because of addictive features such as autoplay, infinite scrolling, and Snapstreaks, they developed compulsive habits, they argue.
Snap rejected the claim that its platform was specifically designed to addict young people and said that measures were taken to make the app safe for them to express themselves.
Due to the settlement, the lawsuit will not proceed. The lawyers for the plaintiffs are pleased with the settlement.
Our ultimate goal is to hold these social media companies accountable for how their actions have impacted millions of children across the country, and these settlements allow us to keep building toward that goal,trial attorneys John Morgan and Emily Jeffcott said in a statement.
It would have been the first lawsuit against Snap over social media’s impact on teens, after the company settled the other cases that had been scheduled for trial. One of the people who was expected to take the stand was Snap CEO Evan Spiegel.
A company spokesperson told Reuters in a statement that the company has built safeguards, launched safety tutorials, and partnered with experts, and remains committed to “continually strengthening the safety, privacy, and well-being of our community."
Stay updated with our latest stories and follow us on social media
Be the first to discover new stories, ideas, and updates from our team.
This case was a test case. There are still thousands of similar cases involving thousands of victims pending. In the US, such so-called ‘bellwether’ cases are used to determine the outcome of a lawsuit so that the thousands of other cases can then be resolved more quickly.
According to the plaintiffs’ lawyers, the next bellwether trials are scheduled to begin in March 2027.
The plaintiffs had previously reached settlements with Meta, TikTok, and YouTube. In August, Meta settled a lawsuit over mental health issues caused by social media for $16.68 billion.
Meta’s settlement came only a few months after a New Mexico court ordered the company to pay $375 million over misleading users about the safety of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, and enabling child sexual exploitation on its platforms.
