Lawsuits Over Teen Social Media Addiction Being Prepared For Bellwether Trials in Oct. 2025

Lawyers involved in the growing number of federal lawsuits over teen social media addiction will meet today with the U.S. District Judge presiding over the litigation, to discuss the status of claims being pursued by families throughout the United States, and progress that has been made preparing for the first bellwether trial, which is scheduled to begin on October 25, 2025.

The lawsuits seek damages from Meta, Alphabet Inc., Google LLC, YouTube LLC, Snap. Inc., TikTok Inc., ByteDance Inc. and other popular internet companies, each raising similar claims that the social media platforms are intentionally designed to manipulate and maximize user time and engagement, as well as the type of content they view.

Families and young adults claim these tactics cause addiction and self-destructive behavior among teen users, resulting in anxiety, depression, eating disorders and psychological damage, which has caused attempted or actual suicides, especially among young girls.

Earlier this week, U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy acknowledged that the evidence appeared to indicate social media was a major contributor to a crisis of teen mental health problems in the U.S.. He called on Congress to give him the power to require warnings on social media websites, to help alert and remind parents of the risks of teen social media addiction and mental health risks.

In the lawsuits, each of the social media platform giants have been accused of ignoring the same evidence of the harmful consequences of their products that led Murthy to issue his warning. Parents, school districts young adults and dozens of states attorneys general allege the companies have refused to do anything to prevent the addiction and emotional distress, since it would directly impact their profits.

Since last year, at least 475 teen social media addiction lawsuits filed against the operators of Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube and Snapchat, and the cases have been centralized for pretrial proceedings before U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers in the Northern District of California.

Teen Social Media Addiction Bellwether Trial Slated for 2025

As part of the pretrial management, Judge Rogers is planning to hold several bellwether trials, to help the parties gauge how juries are likely to respond to certain evidence and testimony that will be repeated throughout the litigation.

In March, Judge Rogers issued a pretrial schedule to begin the selection process for the first social media addiction bellwether trials. Under the schedule, the parties identified prospective bellwether discovery pool cases in April. The parties are now in the process of conducting fact discovery on those cases to help them select which ones will be most fit to serve as the first bellwether trial, which is scheduled to begin on October 25, 2025.

The parties are scheduled to meet with Judge Rogers today, as part of a case management conference (PDF) to update the court on the progress of discovery proceedings regarding the potential bellwether selections identified in April. Plaintiffs and defendants will bring the Court up to speed on how much information has been shared between the parties, and how far along they are in meeting her December 20 fact discovery deadline.

The parties and court will choose which cases will be selected for the first group of bellwether trials by February 6, 2025.

At the conference today, lawyers for the parties and the court will also discuss several efforts by the Defendants to dismiss various cases, including all those filed by school districts and all government entities who say they had to pay for mental health treatment and other services to aid social media-addicted students. In addition to the school districts, 35 states have also filed teen social media addiction lawsuits against the platforms.

If, after the bellwether trials have been held, social media addiction settlements are not reached to resolve the claims, each individual lawsuit may later be remanded back to the U.S. District Court where it was originally filed for a future trial.