Social Media

Another Social Media 'Addiction' Trial Starts Today. Its Claims Are Weak—but Dangerous.

Meta is on trial for fomenting "FOMO," among other things. It sounds silly, but the playbook used here could work against religious groups, fast food, and much more.

Elizabeth Nolan Brown | 8.12.2026 11:39 AM

Share on FacebookShare on XShare on RedditShare by emailPrint friendly versionCopy page URL Add Reason to Google

Media Contact & Reprint Requests

(Illustation: Midjourney)

The Metaverse may have flopped, but Meta is still on trial for supposedly altering reality.

The parent company of Facebook and Instagram "has profoundly altered the psychological and social realities of a generation of young Americans" by designing its products "to entice, engage, and ultimately ensnare youth and teens," four states say.

You are reading Sex & Tech, from Elizabeth Nolan Brown. Get more of Elizabeth's sex, tech, bodily autonomy, law, and online culture coverage.

LinkedIn

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Email(Required)

SUBSCRIBE

Didn't We Do This Already?

The first thing you might think upon hearing that Meta is on trial today for purportedly harming kids' mental health is "Wait, didn't we already do this?" Yes and no.

There was a similar case against Meta in New Mexico state court. A judge last week ordered Meta to pay $567 million in that case.

And there are actually thousands of plaintiffs—including private individuals, school districts, and state attorneys general—suing several Big Tech companies in federal court over the allegedly addictive features on their social platforms. A judge chose three test cases (known as "bellwether" cases) from this multidistrict avalanche of civil lawsuits. The first of those was decided in March, with Meta and Google ordered to pay millions over psychological harm they purportedly caused to a now-20-year-old woman known in court as Kaley G.M.

The trial that starts this week (People of the State of California, et al., v. Meta Platforms, Inc., et. al) was brought against Meta by the states of California, Colorado, Kentucky, and New Jersey. (In total, 29 states are part of the multidistrict litigation, but only four of those states are trying their cases together in the trial that starts this week.)

Jury selection in the case will begin today, with opening arguments scheduled to start next week. The trial is expected to last seven weeks, Reuters reports. The judge in this case, Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, "will oversee the trial and issue her decision after it concludes ​in October," but she "made the ⁠unusual decision to empanel an advisory jury to issue a decision on specific questions that she will use to guide her ruling. "

If the states get their way, not only will Meta be on the hook for massive fines but also for making nationwide changes to its platforms. "Big ​damage awards and judicial dictates about features both potentially ​pose existential threats to social media defendants," law professor Eric ⁠Goldman told Reuters.

Speech by Any Other Name

Attorneys general for California, Colorado, Kentucky, and New Jersey have alleged that Meta has "develop[ed] and implement[ed] features that it knows induce young users' extended, addictive, and compulsive social media use."

Meta argued that the suit is largely barred by Section 230 of the federal Communications Decency Act, which says interactive computer services generally aren't liable in civil court actions arising from the speech of their users. Section 230 is what allowed social media platforms, search engines, and much of the web as we know it to take off.

But after years of being barred from suing social platforms, state prosecutors have gotten creative. They're now claiming that this isn't about user-generated speech but about tech companies' product design. In this case, the states claim that providing photo filters is contributing to teens' body dysmorphia and that "psychologically manipulative" features like displaying post "like" counts, sending notifications, and using........

© Reason.com