Illustration: Aïda Amer/Axios
Social media companies are poised to face some of their biggest days in court yet as plaintiffs join forces for looming showdowns in California.
Why it matters: The lawsuits — focusing on addictive algorithms and design features that allegedly cause mental health issues among children — have largely been a piecemeal approach, until now.
State of play: Two proceedings are playing out in tandem: one state, one federal.
- One is in Los Angeles County Superior Court and consolidates hundreds of personal injury cases from families and school districts.
- The other is in the Northern District of California federal court and puts together nationwide cases from attorneys general, school districts, local governments and families.
- In the federal proceeding, AGs are only pursuing claims against Meta, while individual plaintiffs and school districts included other social media companies in their complaints.
By the numbers: As of June 2025, court filings show the federal proceeding includes:
- 799 personal injury cases.
- 1,154 cases brought by school districts, schools, cities, counties and tribes.
- Five cases brought by more than 20 state attorneys general.
The state proceeding includes 2,481 personal injury and some school district cases, according to a count by all plaintiffs as of June 2025.
Catch up quick: School districts have been filing public nuisance claims alleging that sleep deprivation, anxiety and other mental health harms brought on by social media are forcing schools to divert resources to help students.
- These claims were dismissed by the state court and are now up on appeal.
- That's in conflict with the federal court proceeding, which is moving ahead. The judge denied a motion to dismiss and said the elements of a public nuisance claim — where there is a health issue impacting a public right — are met.
What they're saying: Laura Marquez-Garrett with the Social Media Victims Law Center said their end goal is to "fix these damn products."
- SMVL is representing more than 40% of the personal injury cases in both proceedings.
- "Money's great but the number one issue is fixing these products," Marquez-Garrett said. "These parents are pissed off and if you gave them the choice between a little bit of money and stopping these companies, there's no question."
Between the lines: Plaintiffs are laser-focused on convincing the courts that social media is a product that should be held to product liability standards, not a platform where Section 230 shields company executives from liability for design choices.
The other side: Companies argue that their behavior, for example around age verification and parental controls, is content-based and therefore Section 230 shields them from being liable for minors being exposed to harm.
- Companies also argue that there is a lack of causation between social media and mental health harms, some of which existed before social media use, and that scientific data doesn't clearly show a causal connection.
- In one filing from Snap, the company claims that no "reasonable jury" could "find that Snapchat was a substantial factor in [the plaintiff's] development of anxiety or depression given the litany of psychosocial stressors that predated her use of Snapchat."
Meta spokesperson Dani Lever pointed to new "Teen Accounts" for Instagram that have "built-in protections to automatically limit who's contacting them and the content they're seeing, and teens under 16 need a parent's permission to change those settings."
- "We also give parents oversight over their teens' use of Instagram, with ways to see who their teens are chatting with and block them from using the app for more than 15 minutes a day, or for certain periods of time, like during school or at night," Lever said.
What's next: The state proceeding is expected to go to trial in November with three initial bellwether cases.
- The federal proceeding isn't expected to go to trial until mid-2026.
