Judge Clears Instagram Addiction Lawsuit To Proceed Against Meta in Massachusetts

A Massachusetts judge has rejected a motion filed by Meta, the owners of Instagram and Facebook, which sought to dismiss a lawsuit brought by the state Attorney General, claiming the company intentionally designs its platforms to foster psychologically damaging social media addictions among children and teens.

Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell filed the complaint (PDF) against Meta in October 2023, alleging that the platform Instagram was a public nuisance, and violated state consumer protection laws.

The Instagram addiction lawsuit was brought in state court, and is one of many similar claims brought by Attorneys General nationwide against various internet platforms, each raising similar claims that the algorithms and interfaces are designed to foster addiction in underage users.

There are also more than 600 social media addiction lawsuits being pursued throughout the federal court system by parents and young adults, seeking damages from Meta, Alphabet Inc., Google LLC, YouTube LLC, Snap Inc., TikTok Inc., ByteDance Inc. and other popular internet companies, for placing their desire for profits before the health and safety of American youth.

Each of the claims raises similar allegations, indicating that the social media platforms are intentionally designed to manipulate and maximize user engagement time, as well as the type of content they view, as part of a coordinated effort to addict teens to their apps. Plaintiffs claim that these tactics have caused self-destructive behavior, anxiety, depression, eating disorders and long-term psychological damage among a generation of teens.

In response to the Massachusetts A.G.’s Instagram lawsuit, Meta filed a motion to have the case dismissed, arguing that the state had failed to file a proper claim, since the site is not responsible for content created by third-party users.

However, in a Memorandum and Order (PDF) issued on October 17, Suffolk County Superior Court Justice Peter B. Krupp rejected Meta’s arguments and denied the motion, indicating that the state’s claims were pointed squarely at Meta’s activities and the design of the Instagram platform, not the activities of third-party users.

The state maintains that it has internal data showing that Meta knew the design of Instagram was resulting in harm and social media addiction among children. The Massachusetts lawsuit claims that leaders of Meta and Instagram were made aware of the problems, but refused to make changes to the site, which its own research revealed would result in less harm to teens.

“Meta asserts that those harms are associated with third parties who provide the alleged content and who act independently from Meta,” Judge Krupp wrote, noting that “the Complaint is primarily based on Meta’s own conduct, not third-party content. Moreover, because Meta was purportedly aware of the harms occurring to young users from overuse of Instagram, the alleged mental and physical harms suffered by Massachusetts youth and the associated burdens to the Massachusetts school and health care systems were foreseeable.”

Krupp noted the state’s allegations that Meta made false claims about the safety of Instagram, and that the platform’s age-verification system is ineffective, put the focus squarely on Meta’s actions in the litigation.

Status of Federal Social Media Addiction Lawsuits

A motion similar to the one that Meta brought against the Massachusetts A.G.’s complaint was already dismissed by a judge at the federal level for similar reasons on October 15.

Given similar questions of fact and law raised in complaints brought throughout the federal court system, an MDL was established for all federal social media lawsuits over teen addiction last year, centralizing the cases before U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers in the Northern District of California, for coordinated discovery and pretrial proceedings.

As part of the management of the litigation, Judge Rogers has indicated that several bellwether trials will be held, to help gauge how juries are likely to respond to certain evidence and testimony likely to be repeated throughout the federal claims.

The first federal social media addiction cases are not expected to go before a jury until at least 2026. According to a case management order issued by Judge Rogers earlier this year, following the completion of general fact discovery, the parties will select a small group of representative claims in May 2025, which will be used to help determine how juries may respond to certain evidence and testimony that will be repeated throughout the trials.

Although the outcome of these early trial dates will not have any binding impact on other families pursuing lawsuits, the average payouts awarded by the juries may impact the amount the companies may be required to pay in any social media settlements over the teen addiction problems.