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:
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.
States' settlement · Announced August 26, 2026 · Not a fund for individual families
Meta settles the states' claims for a maximum of $16.68 billion
On August 26, 2026, mid-trial in federal court in Oakland, Meta agreed to pay a maximum of $16.68 billion to resolve claims brought by states across the country that it designed Facebook and Instagram to addict children, misled consumers about their safety, and improperly collected the personal data of children who used its platforms. The trial covered consumer-protection claims by California, Colorado, Kentucky, and New Jersey, plus claims by 29 states that Meta violated the federal Children's Online Privacy Protection Act. Meta denied wrongdoing in agreeing to settle.
Nationwide teen safeguards: Meta also agreed to changes for teenage users of Facebook and Instagram nationwide, including daily usage limits and nighttime blocks.
What it does not cover: this resolves the states' enforcement claims. It is not a fund that pays individual families, there is no public claim form attached to it, and it does not resolve the thousands of individual injury cases pending in MDL 3047 or in state courts.
Other platforms are not parties: Snap, TikTok and ByteDance, and YouTube and Alphabet still face thousands of lawsuits over the same category of claims.
If your family was harmed: a settlement between Meta and state governments does not preserve or advance an individual claim. Individual claims still have to be filed through counsel, and state filing deadlines keep running.
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.
State AG trial · 29 states · Not part of MDL 3047
Meta whistleblower: Zuckerberg ignored child-safety calls
On August 19, 2026, Arturo Béjar — a former Meta safety engineer and later an Instagram consultant who has also testified before Congress about child safety — took the stand in the 29-state attorney general trial against Meta. This is the same multi-state action the Ninth Circuit refused to delay on August 10, 2026. It is a separate proceeding from MDL 3047 and from New Mexico's standalone state case.
"Don't ask, don't tell" on under-13 users. Béjar testified that Meta had a culture of not looking too closely at how many children under 13 were on Instagram and Facebook, even though the company had tools that could have identified them. He described the approach as "don't ask, don't tell."
Safety requests allegedly reached Zuckerberg. Béjar said he and others raised concerns directly to CEO Mark Zuckerberg about harms to young users and asked Meta to prioritize child safety. According to his testimony, those requests were not acted on.
"You cannot trust Mark Zuckerberg with kids." Béjar told jurors he concluded that Zuckerberg could not be trusted with children's safety because public safety commitments were not matched by internal action.
Public safety claims vs. internal practice. The testimony frames a central allegation in the states' case: that Meta publicly touted safety practices and parental controls while internally deprioritizing or ignoring measures that could have reduced harm to minors.
This testimony is part of the states' enforcement trial, not the federal MDL 3047 personal-injury docket. It does not create a claims process or guarantee any recovery for 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.
Meta's August 26, 2026 settlement with the states does not resolve MDL 3047. That agreement ends the states' enforcement claims tried in Oakland. The individual family and school-district cases coordinated in this MDL remain pending, and Snap, TikTok and ByteDance, and YouTube and Alphabet are not parties to it.
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.
Meta agreed to pay up to $16.68 billion to resolve claims brought by states over child safety, addictive design, and children's data. It resolves the states' enforcement claims — not individual family claims, and not MDL 3047.
Arturo Béjar told jurors in the 29-state trial against Meta that CEO Mark Zuckerberg ignored internal child-safety calls and that the company operated a "don't ask, don't tell" policy on under-13 users.
Jury selection began Wednesday in the federal trial over claims that Meta's platforms harmed youth mental health and tracked children under 13 without parental consent. California, Colorado, Kentucky and New Jersey go first.
Speak with our legal team about whether your family may have a claim in the ongoing social media harm litigation (MDL 3047). Filing preserves your place and protects deadlines as the case develops; there is no public claim form and no automatic payment.