Dan Schneider of Media Research Center (MRC) says Meta and Google – the social media giants that operate Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube – will be in court this week for this "bellwether case."
"The allegation is that these social media companies intentionally designed the product to entice and addict young people to it," he reports.
In her lawsuit, the plaintiff, a young woman identified as K.G.M., claims features like infinite scroll, recommendation algorithms, and autoplay exploit psychological vulnerabilities and cause intentional harms like sextortion, depression, eating and substance abuse disorders, and suicide.
"Some of the accusations relate to how casinos will have machines that have the beeps and the buzzers and the bells … like a reward system, a gaming system that the human mind turns into an irresistible effort to keep the focus," Schneider explains.
His own research has uncovered how Big Social uses professionals in human behavior to help them "hook" users, especially young people.
"I have seen how these tech platforms have specifically hired psychiatrists, psychologists, neuroscientists," the watchdog relays. "The allegation is that these people have been hired specifically to figure out how to hook kids and adults on the platform."
Snapchat and TikTok were originally named in the case but settled their parts of the lawsuit before trial for undisclosed sums.
Experts expect a tough case for the plaintiff to fully win, but even partial success could be a landmark moment, forcing tech giants to rethink features and safety practices for teens.
Schneider is hoping for a well-deserved reckoning.
"Conservatives in particular have been shouting at these Big Tech platforms about all the things that they've been doing wrong to harm us, and they've ignored us," he accounts. "They're going to get what they deserve."
