Google’s YouTube settles social media addiction case with teen

Google’s YouTube has settled a social media addiction case brought by a 15-year-old in Florida, in a fresh legal blow for online platforms accused of fuelling a mental health crisis among children.

The teenager, who used the initials R.K.C. in court documents, alleged that YouTube and other social media firms had designed their platforms to be addictive.

“This matter has been amicably resolved and our focus remains on building age-appropriate products and parental controls that deliver on that promise,” Google spokesman José Castañeda said in a statement to the BBC.

R.K.C. is also suing Instagram-parent Meta, TikTok, and Snap Inc in a trial currently set to begin on 27 July.

R.K.C.’s allegations will be the second such case, following a similar one brought by a 20-year old California woman, known as K.G.M., who won a $6m (£4.5m) verdict against YouTube and Meta earlier this year.

The result was expected to have implications for hundreds of social media addiction cases.

Snap and TikTok settled K.G.M.’s case before the start of trial.

“As jurors saw in the first bellwether trial, leadership at these social media companies have been strategizing for years to hook children early and maximize their usage,” said R.K.C.’s attorneys John Morgan and Emily Jeffcott in a statement.

They said features like autoplay and infinite scroll are designed “with the aim of increasing profits at the expense of the mental health of our youth”.

Google told the BBC it had built YouTube “responsibly – working with families to give young people safer, more helpful experiences online” for more than a decade.