Jurors in the first two US trials from a widening wave of lawsuits over harm to children found Meta and Alphabet’s Google liable, setting up an appeals fight with the potential to reshape how US law shields tech companies from lawsuits.
In California, a Los Angeles jury found Meta and Google liable for a young woman’s depression and suicidal thoughts after she said she became addicted to Instagram and YouTube at a young age.
Jurors ordered the companies to pay a combined $6 mn in damages. In a separate New Mexico case, jurors ordered Meta to pay $375 mn after finding the company misled users about product safety for young people and enabled the sexual exploitation of children on its platforms.
Those verdicts cut through a legal defense plaintiffs have struggled with for years, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.
The 1996 federal law generally protects online platforms from liability tied to user-generated content. In both trials, plaintiffs moved around that shield by arguing the harm came from platform design decisions, not from the content itself.
Gregory Dickinson, an assistant professor at the University of Nebraska College of Law who studies tech law, said courts are drawing a sharper line between claims about platform functionality or platform conduct and claims that would impose liability for third-party speech.
Meta and Google denied the allegations and said they have taken steps to protect young users.
In both cases, Meta asked the court to dismiss the lawsuits. Google did the same in Los Angeles. Each company argued Section 230 barred the claims. Judges rejected that position and allowed the cases to go to trial.
A Meta spokesperson declined further comment and said the company plans to appeal both verdicts. Google has said it plans to appeal the Los Angeles case, though it did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Those appeals will almost certainly focus on Section 230. The stakes reach far beyond these two verdicts.
Meta, Google, Snap, and ByteDance face thousands of lawsuits in state and federal courts over claims that platform design choices fueled a mental health crisis among teens and young users.
More than 2,400 cases have been centralized before one judge in California federal court, while thousands more sit in consolidated proceedings in California state court.
Legal experts say courts have been moving toward a narrower reading of Section 230. Several lower courts have ruled that platform design choices do not fall within the law’s protections. No appellate court has weighed in yet. That matters because appellate rulings, unlike trial court decisions, bind other courts.
The consequences could spread well beyond social media. Legal experts say an appellate decision on Section 230 could shape lawsuits involving other online platforms used by children.
More than 130 federal cases are pending against Roblox, for example, accusing the company of failing to protect users from sexual exploitation. Roblox denies those claims.
Eric Goldman, co-director of the High Tech Law Institute at Santa Clara University School of Law, said the broader internet is on trial, not only social media. If these legal theories hold up, he said, plaintiffs will use them elsewhere.
Appeals in both matters will first go through state appeals courts. After that, the cases could move higher.
The US Supreme Court has already shown interest in the scope of Section 230. In 2023, the court heard a challenge involving YouTube, then stepped around a ruling on the legal protections for internet companies.
In 2024, the court declined to hear a Texas teen’s attempt to revive a lawsuit accusing Snap of failing to protect underage users from sexual predators.
Two conservative justices, Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch, dissented from that decision. They warned that courts were delaying a needed review of the issue and wrote that social media platforms have increasingly treated Section 230 as a get-out-of-jail-free card.
Meetali Jain, director of the Tech Justice Law Project, said she believes the Supreme Court is now open to taking up the right case on Section 230. This wave of appeals may give it one.
