IN RE: SOCIAL MEDIA ADOLESCENT ADDICTION/PERSONAL INJURY PRODUCTS LIABILITY LITIGATION
Issue
Whether Meta's internal research, design decisions, and communications regarding adolescent users' mental health and well-being are admissible at trial to support plaintiffs' product liability claims arising from alleged addiction-causing features of Facebook and Instagram.
What Happened
This document is Plaintiff's Preliminary Trial Exhibit List filed on March 16, 2026, in the multidistrict litigation consolidating personal injury claims against Meta and other social media defendants. The list identifies hundreds of proposed trial exhibits drawn from Meta's internal documents, including PowerPoint presentations, emails, internal research studies, and message summaries, covering topics such as teen mental health, problematic use research, social comparison effects, suicide and self-injury content, and Meta's internal awareness of risks to adolescent users. The exhibit list also includes congressional hearing transcripts, coroner reports, and video excerpts of statements by Meta executives and early investors. No court ruling is reflected in this document; it is a pretrial filing identifying evidence plaintiffs intend to introduce at trial.
Why It Matters
The breadth and specificity of the exhibit list signals that plaintiffs intend to prove at trial that Meta possessed extensive internal knowledge of harms its platforms caused to adolescent users, which could be significant for establishing the knowledge and design-defect elements of product liability claims that courts in this MDL have allowed to proceed notwithstanding Section 230 immunity arguments.
Related Filings
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