Snap Settles Two Teens' Addiction Claims Midway Through First Trial

Snap Inc. settled Monday with two teenagers who accused the company of designing Snapchat to be addictive, ending the first trial the company faced in the litigation over social media's effects on young people. Jury selection in the Los Angeles state court case had begun the week before, and Snap chief executive Evan Spiegel had been expected to take the stand.

The plaintiffs, identified in court as S.J., a 16-year-old from Illinois, and K.D.B., an 18-year-old from Mississippi, said they began using YouTube as early as age 3 and the other platforms around age 9, developing compulsive habits they attribute to features such as autoplay and infinite scroll. Both had already settled with Meta, TikTok and YouTube before the case against Snap went forward.

"Our ultimate goal is to hold these social media companies accountable for how their actions have impacted millions of children across the country, and these settlements allow us to keep building toward that goal," John Morgan and Emily Jeffcott, trial attorneys for K.D.B., said in a statement.

Why this case was picked out of thousands

The suit was selected from thousands of pending complaints as a bellwether — a case intended to test the claims against Snap and the other companies and to shape how the rest of the litigation resolves. Jury selection made this the second such case to reach trial in Los Angeles state court over allegations that young people became addicted after the platforms were designed to encourage compulsive use.

It was also meant to be Snap's first. The company had already settled the other cases that had been scheduled for trial, leaving this one as the only remaining public test of its conduct before a jury. Because the case settled rather than went to verdict, none of the plaintiffs' evidence was tested in open court and no findings were made about Snap's design choices.

The settlement terms were not disclosed in the plaintiffs' announcement or in statements from either side. A Snap spokesperson said the company has built safeguards, launched safety tutorials and partnered with experts, and remains committed to "continually strengthening the safety, privacy, and well-being of our community." In a statement to TechCrunch, a spokesperson added that "the parties are pleased to have been able to resolve this matter in an amicable manner."

The March verdict that set the terms

The first case in the sequence, decided in March, ended with a Los Angeles jury finding Meta and YouTube negligent and awarding a young woman $6 million in damages. That verdict established that a jury could be persuaded that platform design contributed to a plaintiff's harm — the question every subsequent case has been organized around.

The two teens chosen for trial after that verdict either settled or dropped their claims against the companies, and the first school district selected for trial settled with all of the defendant companies. Those outcomes reduced the pressure on the remaining bellwethers to produce a public record, and Monday's settlement continues the pattern: the docket is thinning through agreements rather than judgments.

A parallel track through state attorneys general

The private suits are running alongside regulatory action brought by states. In August, Meta reached settlements worth up to $18 billion with nearly every state and U.S. territory to resolve lawsuits by attorneys general over claims its platforms harmed teens, and agreed to change how Instagram and Facebook work for younger users. That deal conditioned $5 billion of the payout on the states reaching similar settlements with Snap, TikTok and YouTube.

For treatment providers and clinicians, the litigation matters mainly for what it assumes about harm. The complaints describe depression, anxiety and eating disorders as injuries attributable to prolonged compulsive use in adolescence. That framing lands in a policy environment already measuring the same conditions: the CDC's 2025 Youth Risk Behavior Survey, released in October, included a report on unmet need for mental health services among high school students who reported persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness.

The companies have rejected the underlying claim. They argue their platforms were not designed to addict young people and say they have taken steps to make the apps safer for minors.

What the litigation looks like from here

Thousands of suits remain in federal and state courts, brought not only by individuals but by school districts, municipalities and other government entities alleging that the companies knowingly sought to addict children and contributed to a youth mental health crisis involving anxiety, depression and suicide.

The plaintiffs' lawyers said the next bellwether trials are scheduled to begin in March. Whether any of them reaches a verdict is now the open question, and it is the one that determines whether the $6 million judgment from March remains an outlier or becomes the template for a much larger set of outcomes.