About the litigation

In re: Social Media Adolescent Addiction/Personal Injury Products Liability Litigation (MDL No. 3047, N.D. Cal.) consolidates thousands of cases alleging that platforms including Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, Facebook, and YouTube were negligently designed to maximize engagement at the expense of adolescent mental health.

Plaintiffs allege the platforms knew of foreseeable harms — depression, anxiety, self-harm and suicidal ideation, eating disorders, body dysmorphia, and compulsive-use / sleep harms — and failed to redesign their products or adequately warn families. Nothing on this page has been proven in court.

What individual families should know

There is currently no MDL-wide settlement and no established per-person payout in MDL 3047. Any compensation for individual families would only be set if a global settlement is later negotiated, or if bellwether verdicts establish a range — neither has happened for the federal docket.
Verified dollar figures are case-specific. The $6 million KGM bellwether verdict and the approximately $27 million Breathitt County school-district settlement went to the parties in those specific cases. They are not a general fund and do not determine what any other family may receive.
The New Mexico judgment is not a claims process. The roughly $942 million ordered in New Mexico's state enforcement action funds public abatement and civil penalties; it does not pay individual families and is not available to claim.
There is no public claim form or automatic payment. Participation for an individual family — including families in Pennsylvania or any other state — requires retaining a law firm to file an individual complaint in the federal litigation. This is not a class action with a registry.
Filing now preserves your place. Starting a review and filing a complaint can protect deadlines and establish your family's claim as the litigation develops. It is not a claim on an existing fund.

Recent developments

Figures last verified: August 10, 2026

The items below summarize publicly reported court activity as of August 2026. They are provided as general legal news, not legal advice, and they do not predict the outcome of any individual claim. Two separate tracks are moving at once — a federal multidistrict litigation and a stand-alone New Mexico state case — and they should not be confused with one another.

Developing litigation · August 10, 2026

Current developments

The addiction lawsuits are moving forward. The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected Meta, Google, TikTok, and Snapchat's bid to halt more than 3,000 social media addiction lawsuits before trial. The companies argued Section 230 shielded them from failure-to-warn claims about addictive design; the court held that Section 230 is a defense to liability rather than blanket immunity, so the appeal was premature. The underlying federal cases, including MDL 3047, remain centralized before Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers in Oakland, California.
A state attorney general trial is underway. The panel also denied Meta's request to delay a trial brought by 29 state attorneys general, which began this week. The states allege Meta illegally collected children's data and deliberately engineered its platforms to keep young users engaged.
Early verdicts and penalties have gone against the platforms. A Los Angeles jury found Meta and Google negligent in the first bellwether trial, awarding $6 million to a plaintiff who said she became addicted to Instagram and YouTube as a child. Meta separately lost both phases of a New Mexico case — $375 million in damages for misleading safety claims, plus a $567 million public-nuisance penalty.

This is a developing litigation update, not a settlement announcement. These rulings involve other parties and other facts; they do not establish that any new claimant will recover anything. There is no guaranteed recovery in any individual case.

State court · New Mexico · Not part of MDL 3047

New Mexico v. Meta — $942 million to date

Source: Forbes

New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez sued Meta in 2023 after an undercover state operation, in which investigators posed as Facebook and Instagram users under 14, reported that those accounts received sexually explicit material and were contacted by adults. This is a state consumer-protection and public-nuisance case brought by a state attorney general — it is a separate proceeding from the federal MDL described below, with different claims, a different court, and different remedies.

March 2026: a jury found Meta liable for violating New Mexico's Unfair Practices Act by misleading the public about child safety, awarding $375 million in civil penalties — reported as the first successful state suit against Meta over child safety.
Source: Reuters
August 2026: Santa Fe judge Bryan Biedscheid ordered an additional $567 million into a public abatement fund — $420 million for treatment, with the remainder for prevention and diagnosis — finding that Meta's platforms are "a cause of and have substantially contributed to a public nuisance in New Mexico." That brings the total ordered to date to $942 million.
Source: Fox Business
Injunctive terms: the ruling also requires Meta to display information about protective tools and features, limit teen platform time for five years, send usage notifications, strengthen protections against adult contact with minors, monitor AI chatbots, and delete data on children under 13.
Appeal: Meta has said it disagrees with the ruling and will appeal. The judgment is not final while an appeal is pending.

Because this is a state enforcement action, any money ordered goes to civil penalties and a public abatement fund — it is not a settlement fund that pays individual families.

Federal · MDL 3047 · N.D. Cal.

MDL 3047 status

MDL 3047 is before Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers in the Northern District of California. It is the federal track where individual personal-injury claims, school-district claims, and certain state attorney general claims have been coordinated for pretrial purposes and bellwether trials. There is currently no MDL-wide settlement or established per-person payout in this federal docket.

Over 2,893 cases pending in the federal MDL as of July 2026.
First individual bellwether, KGM v. Meta & YouTube: a $6 million verdict on March 25, 2026 (Meta 70% liable, Google 30%), upheld on appeal June 25, 2026. This verdict applies to the parties in that specific case and does not set a guaranteed payout for other families.
Source: CNBC
Snap and TikTok settled with the KGM plaintiff before trial in January 2026 on undisclosed terms.
First school-district bellwether (Breathitt County, Kentucky) settled for approximately $27 million in May 2026. This settlement applies to that school district and is not a general fund for individual families.
Source: AP News
Next individual bellwether, involving Meta and Snap: July 27, 2026.
First federal attorney general bellwether trial began August 6, 2026 — four states (California, Colorado, Kentucky, and New Jersey) seeking $1.4 trillion in civil penalties.
Source: Reuters
More than 40 state attorneys general have a parallel action against Meta, and roughly 800 school-district lawsuits are pending separately.

How the two tracks differ

New Mexico v. Meta — state court in Santa Fe, brought by the New Mexico Attorney General against Meta only, seeking civil penalties, abatement funding, and injunctive changes on behalf of the public. It does not pay individual families and is not a claims process.
MDL 3047 — federal court in California, consolidating claims by individual families, school districts, and multiple states against several platforms, with bellwether trials used to test representative cases. Individual families must file their own complaints through counsel; there is no public claim form and no automatic payment.
Filing an individual claim in the federal MDL is a different process from the New Mexico state case, and results in one do not determine results in the other.

Verdicts, settlements, and rulings reported here involve other parties and other facts. They are not a promise, prediction, or guarantee about any claim you may have. Deadlines and available claims vary by state and by the facts of each case — speak with a licensed attorney about your own situation.

From the blog

Plain-language coverage of the rulings, verdicts, and deadlines summarized above.

Pennsylvania Attorney General Sues TikTok Over Child Safety Claims
Pennsylvania has joined the states taking TikTok to court over what children see and how long the app keeps them scrolling — and the allegations echo the claims already at the center of the federal social media litigation.
5 min read
Ninth Circuit Lets the Social Media Addiction Lawsuits Move Forward
A federal appeals court refused to stop more than 3,000 social media addiction lawsuits before trial, holding that Section 230 is a defense to liability — not blanket immunity. Here is what that means for families weighing whether to file.
6 min read

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