TikTok moves to settle in landmark youth addiction trial

TikTok has agreed to settle a landmark lawsuit over social media addiction ahead of trial, according to one of the plaintiff's lawyers.

The social media giant is named in the lawsuit alongside Meta , Snap and YouTube, which is a unit of Alphabet-owned Google, accused of deliberately addicting and harming children through their platforms.

In a statement, a lawyer for the plaintiff said an agreement was reached hours before jury selection was due to start in California Superior Court in Los Angeles on Tuesday. Snap Inc., parent company of Snapchat, settled last week for an undisclosed sum.

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Terms of the settlement were not disclosed.

The case involves a 19-year-old from California, identified as KGM, who said she became addicted to the companies' platforms at a young age because of their attention-grabbing design, according to court filings.

She says her depression and suicidal thoughts were exacerbated by using social media from an early age, and that she became addicted to the technology.

The lawsuit claims that this was done through deliberate design choices made by companies that sought to make their platforms more addictive to children to boost profits.

“Borrowing heavily from the behavioural and neurobiological techniques used by slot machines and exploited by the cigarette industry, Defendants deliberately embedded in their products an array of design features aimed at maximising youth engagement to drive advertising revenue,” the lawsuit says.

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“Plaintiffs are not merely the collateral damage of Defendants’ products,” the lawsuit says. “They are the direct victims of the intentional product design choices made by each Defendant. They are the intended targets of the harmful features that pushed them into self-destructive feedback loops.”

The plaintiff "reached an agreement in principle to settle her case" with TikTok, said Joseph VanZandt, a lawyer for KGM. TikTok did not immediately respond to The Independent’s request for comment on the settlement.

KGM’s case is one of three scheduled test cases, known as bellwether trials, chosen from hundreds of related lawsuits accusing the platforms of harming youth. The outcome of her lawsuit could help determine how the other cases are handled.

Snap settled with KGM on January 20. A Snap spokesperson and plaintiff attorneys declined to provide details about that agreement.

The tech companies dispute the claims that their products deliberately harm children, citing a slew of safeguards they have added over the years and arguing that they are not liable for content posted on their sites by third parties.

The trial will continue against Meta and YouTube, with Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg expected to testify.

Additional reporting from Reuters