A rural Kentucky school district just forced Meta to settle the first bellwether lawsuit over teen social media addiction, extinguishing a trial that was supposed to test whether tech companies would pay for the youth mental health crisis.
Breathitt County School District reached settlements with all four defendants this month. TikTok, Snap and Google's YouTube settled last week.
Meta followed on Thursday, less than three weeks before the case was scheduled for trial on June 15 in federal court in Oakland, California. The financial terms were not disclosed. Breathitt County had sought more than $60 million to fund a 15-year program addressing mental health and learning issues it said were caused by social media platforms designed to increase engagement among students.
"We've resolved this case amicably," a Meta spokesperson said, pointing to safety tools like Teen Accounts and parental controls. Meta owns Facebook and Instagram.
Lawyers for the school districts said their "focus remains on pursuing justice for the remaining 1,200 school districts who have filed cases." The Breathitt County case was selected as a bellwether out of roughly 1,200 similar lawsuits consolidated in federal court. Another 3,300 social media addiction cases are pending in California state court. The next school district trial is scheduled for January 2027, brought by the Tucson Unified School District in federal court.
Meta and Google's YouTube suffered a bruising loss in March, when a Los Angeles jury found them liable for designing addictive features that harmed a then-teenage girl. The jury awarded about $6 million in damages.
It was the first verdict to hold social media companies liable for how their products affect young people.
A separate New Mexico jury ordered Meta to pay $375 million in civil penalties in March for misleading consumers about platform safety and enabling harm to children. The stakes in the school district litigation are enormous. DeKalb County School District in Georgia has said it may seek up to $4.3 billion for future mental health costs.
Los Angeles Unified School District and New York City public schools have also filed lawsuits against the companies.
