Snap settled with two teenagers on Monday, two days before opening statements were scheduled to begin in a Los Angeles trial over claims that its app caused depression, anxiety and eating disorders.
The terms of the settlement were not disclosed. Lawyers for the plaintiffs announced the agreement on Monday, days after Meta settled its own case on Friday. Jury selection had begun the previous week. The trial was set to start on Wednesday.
The plaintiffs, identified only by their initials, are S.J., a 16-year-old girl from Illinois, and K.D.B., an 18-year-old woman from Mississippi. They said they started using YouTube at age 3 and other apps at around age 9. They blamed features such as autoplay and infinite scroll for compulsive use that led to depression, anxiety and eating disorders. The companies reject claims that they built their apps to addict young people.
The two had already reached settlements with Meta, TikTok and Google's YouTube, leaving Snap as the last defendant. The case would have been Snap's first trial in a wider wave of litigation. Snap chief executive Evan Spiegel and Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg were due to testify.
The case was one of several bellwether trials drawn from roughly 3,000 pending lawsuits before a Los Angeles court accusing social media platforms of harming young users. In March, a jury found Meta and YouTube negligent in the first such case and awarded a 20-year-old plaintiff $6 million in damages. Both companies have appealed. The next bellwether trials are scheduled for March 2027.
Mark Lanier, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, said: "What these teenagers need is a permanent fix, real design changes that protect kids, not case-by-case patches." The lawyers said their top goal was to hold social media companies accountable for how their actions affected millions of children across the country. In a statement, Snap said both sides were pleased to resolve the matter amicably. The company said it had built safeguards, launched safety tutorials and worked with experts.
