Facebook co-founder and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg sits in his seat inside a bipartisan Artificial Intelligence Insight Forum for all U.S. senators hosted by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 13, 2023.
A landmark case against social media giants Meta , Alphabet's YouTube and TikTok is set to begin Tuesday in Los Angeles Superior Court.
It's the first of several high-profile legal cases kicking off in 2026 that center on allegations that the companies misled the public about the safety of their apps despite knowing that certain design choices contributed to various harms on young users.
Social media companies have long used Section 230, the part of the Communications Decency Act that protects Internet speech, to shield themselves from liability for the content posted on their platform. That's why in these cases, the plaintiffs are focusing their cases on alleged app-design flaws and related public misrepresentations of the safety of the services as a way to steer the arguments away from Section 230-related protections.
These trials have been compared to those brought against 'Big Tobacco' in the 1990s, and experts have said these cases could have long-lasting implications on regulation and public perception of these companies.
In Jan. 2024, lawmakers grilled several social media executives, including Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, during a Senate hearing focused on the companies' efforts to safeguard children on their platforms.
The case kicking off Tuesday focuses on a young woman who alleges that she became addicted to social media as a minor because of certain features and characteristics of apps like Instagram, TikTok and YouTube.
Snap was also part of the civil lawsuit, but the company behind the app Snapchat reached a settlement with the plaintiff last week before the trial commenced.
A separate trial kicks off next week in Santa Fe, New Mexico, in which the state's attorney general alleges that Meta's Facebook and Instagram services failed to safeguard their apps from online predators who sexually exploited various children who used the services.
The New Mexico case is separate from other lawsuits filed by various state attorneys general across the U.S. that allege that design flaws in Meta apps have harmed the mental-well being of children. The company has said it expects those cases to begin as soon as the second half of 2026.
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