Meta and Google, two of the most powerful companies in history, have long rejected claims their social media platforms are inherently dangerous for kids. On Monday, they are beginning a landmark trial over claims that Meta's Instagram and Google's YouTube were intentionally designed to get young users hopelessly hooked despite known perils.
The so-called “bellwether” case is the first to reach trial among thousands of similar lawsuits from individual plaintiffs, school districts, and state officials. It was filed in July 2023 by a now 20-year-old California woman, identified by the initials KGM, who says she became desperately addicted to social media as a child, got flooded with disturbing material she didn't seek, and subsequently experienced body dysmorphia, anxiety, self-harm, and suicidal thoughts.
The trial isn't a consolidated class action because the alleged harms to the thousands of plaintiffs vary too widely. Instead, the courts sorted the lawsuits into thematic groups with representative lead cases. KGM's claims were selected to proceed first, on their own, from among more than 2,400 personal injury filings. The goal is to establish benchmarks for evidence and procedures in the trials that follow. Other plaintiffs are watching closely, many of their parents whose children died from suicide, drug overdoses, or accidental asphyxiation after they allegedly became trapped and targeted in the apps.
“They addicted our kids without any permission, any oversight,” says Lori Schott, 60, a Colorado mother who says her 18-year-old daughter, Annalee, died by suicide on Nov. 15, 2020, after being exposed to content about disordered eating, self-injury, and suicide. “It's not about money. It's not about winning at a trial. We've lost. I've lost my daughter. But it's about change, it's about reform, it's about accountability.”
Speaking with Rolling Stone while holding a photograph of Annalee, Schott says her daughter won prizes competing in rodeos, had landed a lead role in her high school play, and was offered a college rodeo scholarship before her death. When they went through her phone afterwards, they found content saying things like “Bullets are cheap,” and “There's only one way to stop the pain,” she recalls. Annalee's algorithm had “normalized suicide,” she's convinced.
“This is just like big tobacco. This is big tobacco designing their products to addict kids at a young age so they can create lifelong consumers. And some of them don't survive,” says Joann Bogard, 59, an Indiana mom who lost her 15-year-old son, Mason, when he died attempting a viral choking challenge. “They know what they're doing. Big tech knows how their products are designed. And our kids aren't just collateral damage, they're targets. And these cases are going to bring all of that to the forefront.”
Like other plaintiffs, KGM alleges the apps she used were designed to exploit the psychology and neurophysiology of her growing brain. She contends features such as “infinite scroll” deliberately lack natural stopping cues, keeping young users in an induced “flow state” for hours at a time. She claims finely tuned algorithms, auto-play videos, and push notifications are engineered to deliver dopamine-driven rewards that encourage compulsive use.
In a courtroom in downtown Los Angeles, KGM is expected to take the witness stand and tell jurors about her experience. Mark Zuckerberg, the head of Meta, and Adam Mosseri, who runs Instagram, are due to testify as well. KGM's lead trial lawyer is Mark Lanier, known for winning the multibillion-dollar jury verdict in the Johnson & Johnson baby powder case. Google's lead lawyer is Luis Li, who previously represented Vanessa Bryant in her federal court victory over the death-scene photographs involving the helicopter crash that killed NBA legend Kobe Bryant. (Former co-defendants TikTok and Snapchat reached confidential settlements last month to quietly exit KGM's case and watch from the sidelines.)
KGM says her claim line up with internal research and employee communications at Meta uncovered by the court cases. “Oh my gosh yall IG is a drug,” one Meta researcher wrote in a Sept. 10, 2020, message exchange cited in court filings. “We're basically pushers,” a colleague responded. “We are causing Reward Deficit Disorder bc people are binging on IG so much they can't feel reward anymore…like their reward tolerance is so high,” more messages in the chain read. “I know Adam [Mosseri] doesn't want to hear it – he freaked out when I talked about dopamine in my teen fundamentals leads review but it's undeniable,” another message said.
For their part, the social media companies say they prioritize safety. They also argue they're immune from liability because they're simply digital town squares, separate from third-party content creators. They point to Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act, saying it shields them from legal claims so long as they make “good faith” efforts to moderate offensive material. Additionally, the companies invoke the First Amendment, asserting they have a constitutionally protected right to organize and present user-generated speech.
But in a November 2025 ruling, the judge overseeing the Los Angeles County-based cases found that platform design features, apart from user-created content, may have been a “substantial factor” fueling reported injuries to minors. She said various product features present factual questions best decided by a jury.
In their filings asking the judge to dismiss the case, lawyers for Meta argued that KGM admitted during a deposition that her claimed harms from Instagram resulted from user-generated content and messages. They said KGM stated she was bullied in direct messages and that her mental health was negatively impacted by ”explicit photographs” she received from third parties. They further said her mental health issues could be traced to challenges she faced during her childhood and at home.
For her part, KGM alleges dangerous content was recommended to her, and the “addictive design” of the platforms made her “severely dependent,” to the point where she couldn't sleep at night and often refused to go to school the next day. “Because children's and adolescents' brains are not fully developed, they lack the same emotional maturity, impulse control, and psychological resiliency as adults. As a result, they are uniquely susceptible to addictive features in digital products and highly vulnerable to the consequent harms,” her lawsuit reads.
'You don't win when kids are dying'
Research into the role of technology in teens' lives is expected to loom large at trial. The companies will argue their apps help kids reinforce friendships, combat loneliness, pursue creative expression, and access educational resources. Meanwhile, a recent survey of American kids aged 13 to 17 from Pew Research found that 48 percent of teens say social media sites have a mostly negative effect on people their age, up from 32 percent in 2022.
Alarmingly, suicide rates among young people aged 10 to 24 rose sharply between 2007 and 2021, spiking 62 percent, according to the Centers for Disease Control. Before that, the suicide rate for young people remained stable between 2001 and 2007. Health experts, including former Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, say teens are especially susceptible to social pressures, peer opinions, and peer comparison. Risk-taking behaviors also reach their peak during adolescence, they say.
In a statement to Rolling Stonea Meta spokesperson says the company has a longstanding commitment to supporting young people. “For over a decade, we've listened to parents, worked with experts and law enforcement, and conducted in-depth research to understand the issues that matter most. We use these insights to make meaningful changes — like introducing Teen Accounts with built-in protections and providing parents with tools to manage their teens' experiences. We're proud of the progress we've made, and we're always working to do better,” the spokesperson says.
Google similarly denies any claims of negligence. “Providing young people with a safer, healthier experience has always been core to our work,” company spokesperson Jose Castañeda said in a statement sent to Rolling Stone. “In collaboration with youth, mental health, and parenting experts, we built services and policies to provide young people with age-appropriate experiences, and parents with robust controls. The allegations in these complaints are simply not true.”
Laura Marquez-Garrett, a Harvard Law graduate who left a 20-year career in Big Law to join the Social Media Victims Law Center (SMVLC) and represent clients, including KGM, in the mass-tort cases, says it's time for a jury to weigh in. “We're seeking justice, and what that means is not who's right or wrong. It's not who's going to win. You don't win when kids are dying,” Marquez-Garrett tells Rolling Stone. “It's about truth, transparency, and a path to accountability. It's a system that should have been in place years ago. These parents have fought for years just to be heard, and now the evidence is going to come out —the experts, the documents, what these companies knew — and that's how we judge things.”
“It's huge,” grieving mom Tammy Rodriguez, one of the first plaintiffs to sue Meta and Snap back in 2022 with Marquez-Garrett as her lawyer, tells Rolling Stone. “We busted the courtroom doors open. It's not whether we win or lose, because we're always losing children … it's to hold them accountable, just to make them sit there and have to tell their dirty secrets.”
Rodriguez's 11-year-old daughter Selena died by suicide on July 21, 2021, after allegedly becoming so addicted to social media that she would run away from home or turn violent when her devices were confiscated or lost power, the mom says. “[We have] documentation of her report cards before social media and after social media. You wouldn't even think it was the same kid. Teachers always gave the best compliments, and it just all changed. She wasn't sleeping. She developed an eating disorder and was self-harming,” Rodriguez says.
While the outcome of KGM's lawsuit could be an important harbinger, the verdict itself would not be binding on any other plaintiffs. The other cases are set to proceed regardless, with the next personal injury trial lined up to begin a week after KGM's conclusions. “This is just one of thousands of personal injury and school district cases filed against Snap, TikTok, Meta, and Google. As the trials begin, more evidence will come to light of the widespread harm caused by social media platforms that put profit over adolescent safety,” Lexi Hazam and Previn Warren, the court-appointed lead plaintiffs' counsel in parallel federal litigation playing out in the Northern District of California, told Rolling Stone last month. “The coming months will reveal the full scope of the defendants' wrongdoing, and we will continue fighting to hold these tech companies accountable.”
Beyond the state court cases led by KGM's lawsuit, the judge overseeing the federal court claims in Northern California has set a June 2026 trial for school district claims and a subsequent late-summer trial for claims brought by a state attorney general.
“The business model is to keep kids addicted and online, to collect their data, and then monetize it for billions each year, whether it hurts them or not,” Christine McComas, a Maryland mom whose daughter Grace died by suicide at age 15 in 2012 after being bullied on social media, tells Rolling Stone. “They're making choices against the well-being, the health, and the safety and privacy of our children.”
