Morris Group Social Media Lawsuit: Verdicts, Settlements, MDL

Social media lawsuit updates through mid-2026 center on two landmark jury verdicts against Meta, a wave of state attorney general wins, and thousands of pending cases that survived the tech industry’s core legal defenses. In March 2026, juries in California and New Mexico found Meta liable in separate cases within a single day of each other, and courts have since rejected the company’s attempts to overturn the results. Similar cases against YouTube, TikTok, and Snapchat are moving through state and federal courts on parallel tracks.

The First Jury Verdict: California’s K.G.M. Bellwether

The first social media addiction case to reach a jury verdict was tried in Los Angeles Superior Court in early 2026. The plaintiff, identified in filings as K.G.M. and referred to by her lawyers as “Kaley,” alleged that she began using YouTube at age six and Instagram at age eleven, and that features built into both platforms caused her depression, anxiety, body dysmorphia, and suicidal thoughts.¹ Her lawyers argued that infinite scroll, autoplay, constant notifications, beauty filters, and algorithmic recommendations amounted to defective product design.²

TikTok and Snapchat, originally named as defendants alongside Meta and Google, both reached confidential settlements with K.G.M. on January 27, 2026, hours before jury selection began.³ That left Meta and YouTube to face the jury.

On March 25, 2026, jurors found both companies liable on all counts. They determined that Meta and YouTube were negligent in the design of their platforms, knew the designs were dangerous, failed to warn users, and caused substantial harm.⁴ The jury awarded $3 million in compensatory damages, split 70 percent against Meta and 30 percent against YouTube, followed by an additional $3 million in punitive damages after finding the companies’ conduct “malicious, fraudulent, and oppressive.”⁵ The total came to $6 million: $4.2 million from Meta and $1.8 million from YouTube.⁶

Both companies moved to overturn the verdict. On June 9, 2026, Judge Carolyn B. Kuhl denied Meta’s post-trial motion, writing that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act “does not address the companies’ design choices” and that “there was substantial evidence that Plaintiff was harmed by the design features of Instagram, regardless of any of the content found on that platform.”⁷ Both companies have announced appeals.

The $375 Million New Mexico Verdict

The day before the California jury returned its verdict, a jury in Santa Fe hit Meta with a much larger judgment. On March 24, 2026, a jury in New Mexico’s First Judicial District Court, before Judge Bryan Biedscheid, ordered Meta to pay $375 million in civil penalties, calculated at $5,000 per violation of the New Mexico Unfair Practices Act.⁸

The jury found that Meta willfully misrepresented the safety of its platforms and engaged in “unconscionable practices” that endangered children. A second phase, a bench trial on public nuisance claims, began on May 4, 2026. The New Mexico Department of Justice is using that proceeding to seek court orders requiring Meta to implement effective age verification, remove predators from its platforms, and restrict encrypted messaging features that shield bad actors.⁹ Meta said it disagreed with the verdict and would appeal.⁸

How the Cases Are Organized

The social media addiction litigation isn’t a single lawsuit. It’s thousands of cases moving through two parallel systems.

California State Court (JCCP 5255)

In California, cases are consolidated under Judicial Council Coordinated Proceeding 5255, assigned to Judge Carolyn B. Kuhl in Los Angeles Superior Court since 2022. As of late 2023, the proceeding included 350 cases filed by families and 250 by school districts, naming Meta, TikTok, Snapchat, and YouTube.¹⁰ The K.G.M. bellwether came out of this proceeding.

Judge Kuhl’s pretrial rulings shaped the case. She denied the defendants’ motions for summary judgment based on Section 230 and the First Amendment, writing that “the fact that a design feature like ‘infinite scroll’ impelled a user to continue to consume content that proved harmful does not mean that there can be no liability for harm arising from the design feature itself.”¹¹ In an earlier ruling from October 2023, she dismissed strict liability claims for design defect and failure to warn, finding that social media platforms are not “products” for those purposes, but allowed negligence and fraudulent concealment claims to proceed.¹⁰

Federal Multidistrict Litigation (MDL 3047)

Federal cases are consolidated under MDL No. 3047, In re: Social Media Adolescent Addiction/Personal Injury Products Liability Litigation, in the Northern District of California before Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers. The MDL was created on October 6, 2022. As of March 2026, it encompassed roughly 2,407 pending lawsuits from individual plaintiffs, school districts, and state attorneys general.¹²¹³

In November 2023, Judge Rogers ruled that Section 230 and the First Amendment did not bar the negligence claims. Some design defect claims tied to distribution of third-party content were shielded, but claims targeting the companies’ own conduct, like the absence of parental controls or the timing of notifications, could go forward. In October 2024, she allowed most state attorney general claims to move forward, citing Meta’s “alleged yearslong public campaign of deception” about addiction risks, and let school districts pursue negligence and public nuisance claims for costs tied to student addictions.¹⁴

The Breathitt County School District Settlement

School districts have opened a separate front, arguing that addictive platform design forced them to divert resources from teaching into counseling and crisis response. The Breathitt County School District in Kentucky filed one of the leading cases in 2024, seeking more than $60 million to fund student mental health programs and naming Meta, TikTok, Snap, and YouTube.¹⁵

The case was selected as the bellwether for school district claims and was set for a six-week jury trial starting June 12, 2026, before Judge Gonzalez Rogers. Snap, TikTok, and YouTube settled before trial on undisclosed terms. Meta, the last remaining defendant, settled on May 21, 2026, again on terms that were not disclosed. Roughly 1,200 school district lawsuits remain pending in the MDL.¹⁵

State Attorney General Actions

Government enforcement adds a third layer. In October 2023, attorneys general from 41 states and the District of Columbia filed a joint lawsuit alleging that platforms violated the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act and were “addictive and dangerous” to young users.¹⁶

Individual states are moving on their own as well. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued Snap Inc. in February 2026, alleging violations of the state’s Deceptive Trade Practices Act and its Securing Children Online through Parental Empowerment (SCOPE) Act. The complaint claims Snapchat’s “12+” rating misrepresents the presence of mature content and that features like ephemeral messages, infinite scroll, and Snapstreaks are addictive by design.¹⁷

In April 2026, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court unanimously ruled that Meta must face the state’s lawsuit, rejecting the Section 230 defense. Justice Dalila Wendlandt wrote that the claims “do not seek to impose liability on Meta for information provided by third parties” but target the company’s “own conduct, either by designing a social media platform that capitalizes on the developmental vulnerabilities of children or by affirmatively misleading consumers about the safety of the Instagram platform.”¹⁸

A month later, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear Meta’s appeal in a Vermont case, refusing in a brief order to consider the company’s argument that it lacked sufficient ties to the state to be sued there. Vermont Attorney General Charity Clark said the decision affirms “that companies that choose to do business in Vermont, like Meta, can be held accountable when they harm kids.”¹⁹

Why Section 230 Hasn’t Blocked the Cases

Plaintiffs aren’t suing over what users posted. They’re suing over how the platforms are built. The core theory treats design features like infinite scroll, autoplay, algorithmic recommendations, push notifications, and beauty filters as defective products, likening them to a soda bottle that explodes or a car with a faulty steering column.²⁰

The framing matters. Section 230 broadly shields platforms from liability for content posted by users. By focusing on design rather than content, plaintiffs argue the statute doesn’t apply. Courts at both state and federal levels have largely accepted that distinction, though the companies continue to press Section 230 and First Amendment arguments through appeal.⁷

Internal documents unsealed during the litigation have made the design-defect theory harder to brush aside. A 2018 YouTube internal literature review acknowledged the platform was “built with the intention of being addictive” and used “tricks to encourage binge-watching (i.e. autoplay, recommendations, etc).” A September 2021 TikTok report admitted that “compulsive usage on TikTok is rampant” and that younger users had “minimal ability to self-regulate effectively.” A 2020 internal message from a Meta employee read: “Oh my gosh yall IG is a drug… We’re basically pushers.”²¹

The companies counter that there’s no clinical diagnosis for social media addiction, deny a direct causal link between platform use and mental health harm, and argue their design choices are protected speech. Meta’s defense in the K.G.M. trial pointed to the plaintiff’s difficult family life as the real cause of her mental health struggles.²²

Who Can Sue and How the Cases Work

These are individual lawsuits, not class actions. No class has been certified. Attorneys across several firms handle plaintiffs on a contingency-fee basis, and eligibility generally requires that the person used social media platforms before age 18 and experienced documented mental health consequences.²³ Bellwether verdicts don’t automatically bind other cases, but they set the tone for settlement negotiations across the wider docket.

Where Things Stand

Meta and Google are appealing the $6 million K.G.M. verdict in California. Meta is separately appealing the $375 million New Mexico verdict, while the second phase of that case, the public nuisance bench trial, is underway. The federal MDL continues before Judge Gonzalez Rogers with thousands of individual and school district cases still pending, even after Breathitt County settled. State attorney general suits are advancing in multiple jurisdictions, aided by the Massachusetts ruling and the U.S. Supreme Court’s refusal to intervene in the Vermont case.²⁴

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NPR. Meta, YouTube Social Media Trial Verdict
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