IN RE: SOCIAL MEDIA ADOLESCENT ADDICTION/PERSONAL INJURY PRODUCTS LIABILITY LITIGATION
Issue
Whether Meta Platforms, TikTok/ByteDance, Google/YouTube, and Snap are civilly liable under a products liability theory — including defective design and failure to warn — for harms suffered by a school district caused by the addictive and engagement-optimizing design features of their social media platforms.
What Happened
This is a plaintiff's preliminary trial witness list filed by the Breathitt County Board of Education in the Social Media Adolescent Addiction MDL before Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers in the Northern District of California. The school district plaintiff designated 47 witnesses — including lay witnesses such as school administrators, counselors, and finance personnel; fact witnesses consisting of current and former employees of Meta, TikTok/ByteDance, Google/YouTube, and Snap; and expert witnesses spanning addiction medicine, neuroscience, computer science, public health, economics, and forensic accounting. The witnesses are expected to support the district's claims by addressing platform design choices prioritizing engagement over safety, algorithmic recommendation systems, failure to implement age verification, failure to warn of addictive platform features, quantified costs and diverted staff time the district incurred, and, if reached, punitive damages through financial testimony on defendants' wealth and ability to pay.
Why It Matters
This witness list signals that the school district bellwether trial in the Social Media MDL is advancing toward trial on a products liability theory that characterizes engagement-optimizing algorithms and addictive design features as actionable defects — a framing that, if successful, could establish a roadmap for institutional plaintiffs to recover costs attributable to platform design independent of Section 230 immunity arguments previously litigated in the MDL.
Related Filings
Other proceedings in the same litigation tracked by this monitor.
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