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Photo: Anthony Quintano / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY).
Two teenagers who say social media left them with serious mental health problems will take Meta Platforms and Snap to trial in Los Angeles on Wednesday, in the latest courtroom test of claims raised in thousands of US lawsuits over social media's effect on young people. Jury selection begins on October 28, and the trial is expected to run for several weeks.
The two cases at the center of the trial
The plaintiffs are identified in court papers only by their initials: S.J., a 16-year-old girl from Illinois, and K.D.B., an 18-year-old woman from Mississippi. They say they began using YouTube as early as age 3 or 4 and other platforms at around age 9. They allege that features such as autoplay and infinite scroll drove them to compulsive use, and link that use to depression, anxiety and eating disorders.
According to court papers, the plaintiffs also described staying awake for hours scrolling through social media, losing concentration in class, and encountering self-harm methods shown in videos. They are seeking compensatory and punitive damages, the amounts of which have not been disclosed. These are allegations made by the plaintiffs; a jury has not yet ruled on whether the companies are liable.
Who is still in the dock — and who settled
The lawsuits were originally filed against TikTok and Alphabet's YouTube as well as Meta and Snap. Both plaintiffs reached settlements with TikTok and YouTube ahead of the trial, and the Illinois plaintiff also settled with Meta. Wednesday's trial therefore covers both plaintiffs' claims against Snap, and the Mississippi plaintiff's claims against Meta.
Meta and Snap have asked Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Carolyn Kuhl, who is presiding over the proceedings, to split the cases into separate trials, arguing that trying them together would unfairly mix up the evidence for jurors. The judge has not yet ruled on that request. If no further settlements are reached before opening statements, which are expected on November 4, the trial will move forward with both Meta and Snap as defendants.
Why this trial matters beyond two plaintiffs
The case is only the second to go to trial involving individual plaintiffs who allege that social media companies deliberately designed their platforms to be addictive. In the first such trial earlier in 2026, a Los Angeles jury found Meta and YouTube collectively liable for harming a young user known by the initials KGM, and ordered the companies to pay a combined $6 million in damages. Meta said at the time that it respectfully disagreed with the verdict. Snap and TikTok had settled with KGM ahead of that trial.
Months later, Snap, TikTok and YouTube settled another case that had been set to go to trial in August; that plaintiff then withdrew their remaining claims against Meta, allowing the Instagram and Facebook maker to avoid trial without a settlement. The new trial is therefore the first to put Snap's own design choices before a jury in an individual case, and the first since the $6 million verdict to test Meta's.
What to watch
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Instagram head Adam Mosseri and Snap CEO Evan Spiegel are all expected to testify — a rare lineup of tech chiefs in a single courtroom. A Meta spokesperson said the company disagrees with the claims and has built protections into its platforms for a decade. Meta owns Instagram and Facebook.
Three things will shape the case in its first days: whether Judge Kuhl splits the two plaintiffs' cases, what emerges during jury selection, and whether any last-minute settlement removes a defendant before opening statements. Beyond that, the verdict — whatever it is — will be read closely by lawyers on both sides of the thousands of similar lawsuits still pending across the United States.
Sources: Reuters (trial date and jury selection, plaintiffs' allegations, settlements, split-trial request, expected testimony, Meta response); The Straits Times (first KGM trial and $6 million verdict, August settlement, November 4 opening statements); Channel News Asia and UA News (plaintiffs' accounts of compulsive use and its effects). Claims about addictive design and harm are the plaintiffs' allegations, not court findings.