A lawsuit filed on October 8, 2025, in a Manhattan Federal Court by the City of New York, together with its Department of Education and the public hospital system, claimed that leading social media companies promote addictive use to minors. It names several leading social media companies as defendants, including Meta (Facebook and Instagram), Alphabet/Google (YouTube), Snap (Snapchat), and ByteDance (TikTok).
In the complaint, the plaintiffs allege that these companies deliberately engineered their platforms to promote addictive use, especially among children and adolescents, thus contributing to a youth mental health crisis. Additionally, they contend that algorithmic designs exploit psychological vulnerabilities, push compulsive engagement, and intensify harm such as sleep deprivation, school absenteeism, and risky behaviours.
Furthermore, the lawsuit accuses the defendants of gross negligence and creating a public nuisance, arguing that the financial and social burdens of the alleged harms have fallen on public systems, particularly city schools and hospitals.
Consequently, the plaintiffs seek damages under New York public nuisance, negligence, and gross negligence laws, arguing that the defendants’ conduct has disrupted education, strained public hospitals, and imposed substantial costs on the city’s mental health and social services. The lawsuit demands compensation for these expenditures and calls for measures to abate the alleged public nuisance, holding the social media companies accountable for the widespread social and psychological harm caused by their platforms.
General Allegations Against Social Media Companies
The lawsuit sets out sweeping allegations against all defendants, accusing them of deliberately targeting school-aged children as a “core market” and engineering their platforms to maximise addiction and profit at the expense of public welfare.
Furthermore, the plaintiff claims that Meta, Snap, TikTok, ByteDance, and Google have each “designed, developed, produced, operated, promoted, distributed, and marketed” their social media platforms to capture children’s time and attention. Researchers cited in the complaint liken the effects of social media on the brain to those of “gambling and recreational drugs” which keep “consumers using their platforms as much as possible”.
Moreover, the complaint asserts that these companies exploit children’s unique neurological vulnerabilities, noting that minors “lack the legal or mental capacity to make informed decisions about their own well-being”. Despite laws like the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), the social media companies allegedly use only superficial age checks, allowing children under 13 to sign up freely. The plaintiffs argue that this failure is deliberate, as young users are “financially lucrative, particularly when they are addicted”.
The document further explains that children’s…
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