TikTok settles California social media addiction lawsuit prior to trial

LOS ANGELES (KESQ) - On the eve of trial, TikTok has settled a lawsuit filed against it and three other social media platforms by a 19-year-old Northern California woman who alleges the online forums are addictive and harmful to teens and children, an attorney said today. The woman, identified in court documents only as K.G.M., "reached an agreement in principle to settle her case,'' her attorney, Joseph VanZandt, told Reuters, which broke news of the settlement.

No terms of the settlement were announced.   

K.G.M. also sued Snap Inc., the parent company of Snapchat, along with Meta -- parent of Instagram -- and Google-run YouTube. Snap settled its portion of the case last week, but details of that settlement were also not publicly released.

The trial is expected to proceed this week in Los Angeles Superior Court with Meta and Google as the remaining defendants. Industry observers have said the trial is being closely watched as a test case for hundreds of similar pending lawsuits.

The cases all generally allege various damages from what attorneys call addictive social media platforms powered by "complex algorithms designed to exploit human psychology."

"In recent years, there has been growing concern about the impact of digital technologies, particularly social media, on the mental health and wellbeing of adolescents,'' one of the hundreds of L.A. lawsuits contends.   

"Many researchers argue that defendants' social media products facilitate cyberbullying, contribute to obesity and eating disorders, instigate sleep deprivation to achieve around-the-clock platform engagement, encourage children to negatively compare themselves to others, and develop a broad discontentment for life. They have been connected to depression, anxiety, self- harm, and ultimately suicidal ideation, suicide attempts, and completed suicide,'' the suit continues.

According to her suit brought in July 2023,  K.G.M. began using social media at age 10. Her mother did not want her using the social media and tried using third party software to prevent her daughter's use, but the companies design their products in a manner that allow children to avoid parental consent and K.G.M. did just that, the suit stated.   

Prompted by the addictive design of the Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok products, and the constant notifications that Meta, Snapchat, and TikTok began pushing to her 24 hours daily, K.G.M. developed a nonstop compulsion to engage with the products, the suit alleged.

She did not know that each company made programming decisions aimed at targeting K.G.M., the suit states. For example, Meta and Snap's AI user recommendation and connection tools facilitated and created connections between minor plaintiff K.G.M. and complete strangers, including predatory adults and others she did not know in real life and would not have met but for the seemingly random connections these companies made, the suit further stated.   

Meta's and TikTok's product designs also targeted K.G.M. with harmful and depressive content, urging K.G.M. to commit acts of self-harm, as well as harmful social comparison and body image, the suit stated.

"These are connections and content K.G.M. did not seek out or even want to see; instead, these are the types of harms defendants aimed at her in their efforts to prevent her from looking away at any cost,'' the suit alleged.   

At one point, K.G.M. suffered bullying and sextortion via the Instagram product and she and her mother never could determine whether the abuser was someone who knew K.G.M. in real life or if it was a random stranger to whom Instagram connected her, the suit stated.

"In fact, it took K.G.M.'s friends and family spamming and asking other Instagram users to report the persons targeting minor K.G.M. for a two- week period before Meta did anything about the abuses, violation of terms and illegal conduct of which it, by then, had full knowledge,'' the complaint stated.  

The more K.G.M. accessed the companies' products, the worse her mental health became, the suit alleged.