Policy Update: April 2026

Understanding the Changing Legal Landscape for Social Media and Youth

March brought some major developments in tech policy. The Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee held a hearing on Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, a federal law that has long shielded social media companies from being sued over what users post on their platforms. Read our March issue of Policy Voices with Tom McBrien of the Electronic Privacy Information Center to learn more.

Meanwhile, a federal appeals court handed California a partial win on its Age-Appropriate Design Code Act, a state law regulating social media platform design and data processing practices. The court allowed most of the law to take effect: Underage users must have the highest privacy settings by default, geolocation data of underage users cannot be collected or transferred unless necessary for the service, platforms must notify children if parental monitoring tools are being used, disclosures and policies must be presented in age-appropriate language, and platforms must provide families with easy to use privacy tools; platforms can choose to reasonably verify user ages or apply these protections to all unverified users. The court blocked three specific parts: a rule requiring companies to assess how their products affect children’s privacy, limits on data collection and use, and a ban on “dark patterns.”

The biggest story of the month, though, came out of another California courtroom. A jury found Meta (the company that owns Instagram and Facebook) and Google (which owns YouTube) legally responsible for the depression and anxiety a woman suffered after using their platforms from a young age. Snap and ByteDance (owners of Snapchat and TikTok, respectively) were originally named in the lawsuit too, but both settled before trial. The jury awarded the plaintiff, identified publicly as K.G.M., $6 million in damages, with Meta on the hook for 70%. Read the statement from Kris Perry, Executive Director of Children and Screens, on the verdict.

The Litigation Landscape for Social Media Companies

So much has been written about this trial, but to understand why it matters, it helps to zoom out. Right now, there are three separate categories of lawsuits targeting social media companies across the country: 

• • Judicial Council Coordination Proceeding
  • Multi-District Litigation
  • Lawsuits filed directly by state attorneys general

Each works a little differently, and together they represent the most serious legal pressure these companies have faced.

K.G.M.’s case belongs to the first category: a California process called a Judicial Council Coordination Proceeding, or JCCP. According to Haley Hinkle, Policy Counsel for the children’s advocacy group Fairplay, when hundreds or thousands of people file similar lawsuits against the same company, California courts can group them together rather than trying each one separately. A handful of “test trials”  known as bellwethers, are chosen to go first. “These trials are designed to help parties on both sides of a case see how the court and jury will decide key questions, and ultimately to try to help the parties reach resolution of all the cases,” said Hinkle.

K.G.M.’s trial was the first bellwether in a JCCP covering more than 1,500 individual lawsuits against Meta, Google, ByteDance, and Snap, or any combination of these companies. The second bellwether trial is expected this summer. Not every case will end the same way, and outcomes and damages will vary, but K.G.M.’s result sends a clear signal: Juries are willing to side with plaintiffs and award real money. Six million dollars is trivial for companies the size of Meta and Google, but if even a fraction of the remaining cases produce similar results, the total could be significant.

Just as significant as the dollar amount is the fact that these cases are going to trial at all. For years, lawsuits against social media companies were routinely thrown out because of Section 230 protections. But K.G.M. sued based on product liability for platform design, not content.  That argument successfully sidestepped Section 230 and got these cases in front of a jury. That alone is a major legal shift.

“The courthouse doors have opened to families, states, and school districts,” Hinkle said. “Now, juries are reviewing evidence that shows tech executives repeatedly choosing to prioritize profits over safety, and those juries are confirming what parents have been saying for years: Social media companies deliberately design their platforms to hook kids at the expense of their well-being,  and they owe children better. The courts are taking action, and it’s time for Congress to follow suit and hold Big Tech accountable.”

The second category is federal Multi-District Litigation (MDL), which works like the California JCCP but draws cases from federal courts across the country. Social media companies are facing an MDL that combines personal injury cases filed by individuals, lawsuits brought by state attorneys general, and suits from more than 100 school districts. According to Hinkle, each group will likely get its own test trials, since resolving claims from a grieving family looks very different from resolving claims from a  state government or a school system. Even so, results from one group could influence the others. The first test trial here involves Kentucky’s Breathitt County School District, which is suing Meta, Google, ByteDance, and Snap for negligence and public nuisance. It is scheduled to begin in June.

The third category is lawsuits filed directly by state attorneys general, separate from the MDL and brought under each state’s own laws rather than federal law. At least 10 states have filed such suits. In March, New Mexico became the first to win one of these cases when a court found Meta had violated the state’s Unfair Practices Act and ordered the company to pay $375 million.

Worth Watching

There is one more development worth watching. In 2024, Meta’s own insurance company went to court to argue they shouldn’t have to cover Meta’s costs in these product liability cases. In March a Delaware court agreed. This matters because insurance is typically how large companies manage the financial risk of lawsuits. Without it, Meta would have to pay its legal costs, and any damages. How this ruling ripples out to other social media companies, and to Meta’s future cases, remains to be seen. But it adds real financial stakes to an already consequential legal moment.