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Your family’s rights may have been violated by deliberate, predatory platform design targeting minors. Fill out the form for more information »
👥 Est. 100M+ Affected Individuals
📅 Bellwether Trials 2025–2026
📍 Federal & California Courts
In Re: Social Media Adolescent Addiction / PI Products Liability Litigation
3:23-md-03047
Oct 6, 2023
Active
Meta Platforms, Inc.
ByteDance Ltd. (TikTok)
Snap, Inc.
Google LLC (YouTube)
Hackett Law Firm is actively representing families and young adults harmed by social media platforms engineered to maximize addictive use among minors. Thousands of lawsuits have been consolidated into a federal MDL and parallel California proceedings, with bellwether trials underway in 2025–2026.
“The deliberate engineering of platform features — including infinite scroll, push notifications, and AI-driven content feeds — designed to maximize compulsive engagement in minors, causing clinically recognized mental health harm.”
Defendants named in active litigation:
📸 Instagram (Meta)
🎵 TikTok (ByteDance)
👻 Snapchat (Snap Inc.)
▶️ YouTube (Google)
We are closely following developments across the Social Media Adolescent Addiction / Personal Injury Products Liability Litigation consolidated in the Northern District of California (MDL No. 3:23-md-03047). This active litigation involves hundreds of thousands of plaintiffs alleging that social media companies knowingly deployed addictive features targeting children and teenagers.
Internal documents from Meta, TikTok, and Snap — obtained through discovery — show these companies were aware their platforms caused measurable mental health harm to young users, and that this information was concealed from the public.
The lawsuits allege that social media platforms used artificial intelligence and behavioral psychology to engineer features specifically designed to override the developing impulse-control systems of minors. Features including “likes,” infinite scroll, streaks, and algorithmically optimized content feeds were engineered to create compulsive use patterns.
Clinical research presented in litigation documents links heavy adolescent social media use to measurable increases in depression, anxiety, eating disorders, sleep disruption, and self-harm behaviors — particularly among girls aged 10–17.
Families affected by platform-driven mental health harm may be entitled to pursue compensation for medical costs, therapy expenses, emotional distress, and lost quality of life. California law and federal product liability standards provide strong grounds for these claims.
Typical qualifications include heavy platform use beginning before age 18, a diagnosed mental health condition linked to that use, and documented hospitalization or therapy. Each case is evaluated individually at no cost to you.
Our legal team, working in coordination with co-counsel in the MDL, believes the defendant platforms violated product liability standards by knowingly deploying dangerous features without adequate warnings. We further allege negligence, fraudulent concealment of harm, and violations of California consumer protection statutes.
Bellwether trial outcomes from 2025 have been favorable to plaintiffs and are expected to accelerate resolution of pending claims across the plaintiff pool.
Complaint 01/26/26
In no case will any class member ever be asked to pay any out-of-pocket sum. Hackett Law Firm handles all social media addiction cases on a contingency fee basis — meaning we only get paid if and when we obtain compensation for you. In the event a settlement or judgment is reached, the court will determine a reasonable legal fee from that recovery. You pay nothing upfront, ever.