TikTok has agreed in principle to settle a lawsuit brought by a 15-year-old Florida plaintiff, Morgan & Morgan said Tuesday. The teen claims the platform’s design fuelled a social media addiction that damaged his mental health.
Terms remain unfinalised, but the settlement removes ByteDance’s platform from what was set to be the second California state court trial in a wave of litigation accusing major platforms of engineering products to hook young users.
The plaintiff, identified in filings by his initials R.K.C., began using social media around age eight and has attributed subsequent sleep loss, depression and anxiety to platform design. He originally named four defendants — TikTok, Meta’s Instagram, Snap’s Snapchat and Google’s YouTube. YouTube settled in June; Meta and Snap remain scheduled for trial on 27 July.
The settlement follows a pattern set by the first bellwether trial, which concluded in March. TikTok and Snap settled ahead of that proceeding, while Meta and Google proceeded to verdict: a jury found both companies negligent, ordering Meta to pay $4.2 million and Google $1.8 million in damages. A judge rejected the companies’ bid to set aside that verdict in June.
The scale of the underlying docket is what will concern in-house teams beyond the platforms directly named. More than 3,300 addiction-related claims are pending in California state court, with a further 2,600 cases brought by individuals, school districts, municipalities and states, proceeding in California federal court.
A parallel federal bellwether brought by a Kentucky school district against Meta, Snap, TikTok and YouTube settled before trial in June for a combined $27 million.
In-house counsel at consumer platform businesses now face two outcomes rather than one: settle before trial, or risk a jury finding of negligence.
Nearly every US state has filed its own action against the same group of companies. Meta and Snap remain committed to trial on 27 July, where the outcome will either extend TikTok’s settlement pattern or add a third negligence verdict to the record.