Is social media addiction real? Law and science collide in blockbuster federal suit

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Set us as preferred A blockbuster court battle is set to open in Oakland this month, pitting Silicon Valley against attorneys for the state of California in a $1.4-trillion contest with existential stakes and potentially eye-watering payouts.In true Hollywood fashion, the record-smashing, celebrity-studded legal drama is also a sequel.

At the heart of the fight is an essential, hotly contested question: Is social media addiction even real?Meta’s answer, articulated across years of filings and months of litigation, is a resounding “no.”Earlier this year, Meta lost a pair of groundbreaking civil suits in state courts, with juries in Santa Fe, N.M., and Los Angeles concluding its products were harmful to children in verdicts rendered just hours apart.The company is appealing both cases.

California The outcome Wednesday in Los Angeles County Superior Court is potentially precedent-setting for thousands of other pending lawsuits nationwide and could reshape how tech companies are held accountable for children’s harm caused by their products.The damages were relatively small: $375 million to New Mexico for enabling child predators and $4.2 million to Kaley Glenn-Mills in Los Angeles for designing features to hook kids, figures well below Sandoz’s generic drug price-fixing settlement and L.A.’s most recent dog-bite payout, respectively.But their impact was seismic.On Thursday, a New Mexico judge ordered Meta to pay an additional $567 million on top of the earlier damage judgment, ruling the company was a “public nuisance.” In a July 29 earnings report, Meta said that the 2026 trials could “significantly impact” its bottom line.

Now, attorneys general in California and three other states are hoping to parlay that success into an unprecedented verdict in federal court, one that could prove far more significant �...