A Florida teenager dropped his social media addiction lawsuit against Meta $META on Wednesday, days before jury selection was set to begin in Los Angeles Superior Court, with Meta saying the plaintiff received no payment.
The plaintiff, known by his initials R.K.C., filed suit in 2023 against Meta, TikTok, YouTube, and Snap $SNAP, claiming that the companies had engineered their platforms to be addictive in ways that led to sleep deprivation, suicidal ideation, and broader mental health harm. He had resolved his claims against YouTube, TikTok, and Snap through confidential settlements in the weeks prior, which meant Meta stood alone as the only remaining defendant at the time he walked away from the case.
"The claims never held up, and this outcome makes clear that we will not back away from defending ourselves against baseless lawsuits," Meta spokesperson Liza Crenshaw said in a statement.
Attorneys Emily Jeffcott and Rahul Ravipudi, representing R.K.C., framed the outcome differently. "In light of the overall successful result of the litigation and his concerns about enduring a grueling weekslong trial, he has elected to withdraw his claims against Meta," they said in a statement. "He's ready to close this chapter and focus on his recovery."
The case had been selected as a bellwether — an early test trial meant to gauge how juries might respond to hundreds of similar claims — making the dismissal a meaningful procedural win for Meta.
Meta's planned defense, according to TechCrunch, would have centered on data showing R.K.C. spent only a few minutes daily on Facebook and Instagram on average, and an assertion that the majority of his accounts came into existence only after he engaged legal counsel.
The dismissal comes amid a broader wave of litigation that has produced mixed results for the company. Meta's loss in a New Mexico case earlier this year, in which jurors determined the company had left children exposed to sexual predators and hit it with a $375 million penalty, marked its first courtroom defeat over social media harms. An earlier Los Angeles jury also found Meta and Google $GOOGL liable in a case brought by a young woman who alleged addiction to Instagram and YouTube, awarding $6 million in damages — a verdict that, as previously covered, a Los Angeles Superior Court judge upheld after denying new-trial motions from both companies.
California state courts are currently hosting more than 3,300 addiction-related suits targeting Meta, Google, Snap, and TikTok parent ByteDance, with roughly 2,400 additional cases consolidated before a California federal court. A separate trial brought by Tennessee's attorney general, alleging that Meta harmed young people's mental health, is now underway.