The complaint accuses the defendants of designing and operating addictive platforms that harm children’s mental health and well-being.
SAN DIEGO COUNTY, Calif. — San Diego County has joined the growing list of public agencies to sue major social media companies for fueling the country’s current youth mental health crisis.
The lawsuit, filed on January 24, 2025, in San Diego County Superior Court, targets the companies behind Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, and YouTube for knowingly operating addictive platforms.
The complaint accuses the defendants of designing and operating addictive platforms that harm children’s mental health and well-being. According to the lawsuit, the social media giants do so by designing algorithms that lull young users into mindless scrolling, or as the lawsuit refers to it, a “flow state.” In addition, the companies allegedly offer “rewards” through exciting graphics and notifications that keep the user tied to the screen.
Reads the complaint: “[O]ver one-third of 13- to 17-year-old children report using one of Defendants’ platforms ‘almost constantly,’ while admitting this is ‘too much.’ Yet more than half of these kids report that they would struggle to cut back on their social media use. Instead of feeding coins into slot machines, kids are feeding Defendants’ platforms with an endless supply of attention, time, and data.”
Citing numerous studies in the complaint, County Attorneys say the impacts on youth range from exacerbating hyperactivity in young people, shortening their attention spans, and placing undue burdens on school staff and counselors to a need for more special education programs.
But that is not all. The lawsuit attempts to directly tie social media platforms'” use of algorithms to depression and mental health disorders.
“Local data suggest the rates of depression have been steadily increasing among adolescents in San Diego for at least a decade,” reads the lawsuit. “However, the burden of depression is not uniformly distributed across the population. Specifically, both the prevalence of depression and rate of increase are greatest among younger adolescents, females, and youth identifying as lesbian, gay and bisexual. The data also suggest adolescents and youth residing in certain areas of San Diego County may be at higher risk for negative consequences of depression, like acute psychiatric hospitalizations and emergency department visits.”
By filing the lawsuit, San Diego County hopes to designate the social media platforms as a “public nuisance” in California and force the companies to mitigate the impacts by paying for prevention education and addiction treatment.
San Diego County is also asking a judge to order the companies to pay punitive damages and attorney’s fees.
