TL;DRTikTok settled with a Florida teen ahead of the second bellwether social media addiction trial, leaving Meta and Snap as the remaining defendants.
TikTok has reached a confidential settlement with a Florida teenager who accused the platform of contributing to his mental health problems, removing itself from a jury trial scheduled to begin on July 27 in Los Angeles. The deal, first reported by Bloomberg on Tuesday, makes TikTok the second defendant to exit the case in recent weeks. YouTube settled with the same plaintiff last week.
The plaintiff, a 15-year-old boy identified in court filings by his initials, accuses Meta, YouTube, TikTok, and Snap of designing their platforms to be addictive through features such as infinite scroll and autoplay. He has been using social media since he was eight years old, according to his attorneys. He has been diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder and major depressive disorder tied to his social media use, and began seeing therapists in 2023 for those conditions, including suicidal ideation.
With TikTok and YouTube now out, Meta and Snap are the only defendants still facing the jury. Snap CEO Evan Spiegel, who was removed from the witness list after Snap settled a previous case, could testify in court for the first time in this trial. Judge Carolyn Kuhl, who presided over the first bellwether, will also oversee this one.
