The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to intervene in a lawsuit brought by Vermont's attorney general against Meta Platforms, allowing claims that the company designed its Instagram app to be addictive for young users to proceed. This decision underscores the escalating legal challenges faced by major technology firms concerning child and teen safety on their platforms.The justices rejected Meta's appeal, which sought to overturn a lower court's ruling that permitted the lawsuit to move forward. Meta had argued that Vermont courts lacked jurisdiction over the dispute, contending that the state did not allege the app or its features were designed in Vermont, nor that any alleged misrepresentations about Instagram's safety or addictiveness occurred within the state.Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has previously denied that Instagram targets children.Vermont's lawsuit, filed in 2023 by Democratic Attorney General Charity Clark, asserts that Instagram was engineered to "exploit teenagers' developing brains" to foster addiction and boost advertising sales, including ads targeting Vermont markets and young people. The state further claims Meta intentionally misled consumers about the product's safety, alleging the company studied teens' neurological, cognitive, and psychological vulnerabilities to encourage compulsive and excessive app use, thereby harming their mental health.This case is part of a broader wave of litigation across the nation, involving individuals, municipalities, states, and school districts, all responding to a global backlash over social media's impact on young users. (Getty Images/iStockphoto)The Vermont action is one of a coordinated effort involving 42 state attorneys general filing enforcement actions in both state and federal courts. Meta had sought to dismiss the Vermont case, arguing that allowing it to proceed would violate its due process rights under the U.S. Constitution's 14th Amendment by potentially subjecting it to similar legal challenges in all 50 states.However, the Vermont Supreme Court rejected this concern in 2025, stating that "A company that reaches out and purposefully avails itself of a forum state's market for its own economic gain can expect to be haled into court in that jurisdiction to account for its conduct related to those business activities." The court concluded that any due process concerns were "clearly extinguished" given Meta's alleged actions.The Supreme Court's decision follows a series of unfavorable outcomes for Meta in state courts. In April, Massachusetts' highest court ruled that Meta must face a similar youth addiction lawsuit from that state's attorney general. March saw a New Mexico jury order Meta to pay $375 million in civil penalties for misleading users about the safety of Facebook and Instagram and enabling child sexual exploitation. Also in March, a Los Angeles jury found Meta and Alphabet’s Google negligent for designing harmful social media platforms, awarding $6 million to a 20-year-old woman who became addicted as a child. In May, Meta settled a lawsuit brought by a Kentucky school district, one of thousands seeking to recover costs incurred to combat a mental health crisis allegedly fueled by social media platforms.