Georgia Legislation and Social Media Lawsuits Against Meta, TikTok, Snap, and YouTube: A 2026 Update
If you are a parent, guardian, or teacher, you have probably felt it in your gut for years: these apps are built to keep our kids hooked, and somebody should have to answer for what that's doing to them. In 2026, courts and juries have finally started to answer that question. The answers are worth paying attention to.
I have written before about protecting kids on Roblox and keeping teenagers safe online. This post is different. It is an update on the massive wave of litigation against the social media companies themselves and what it could mean for Georgia families. I also cover what Georgia’s legislature is doing to try and protect children under 16 years old and the various challenges associated with those efforts.
Georgia’s Efforts to Protect Our Kids
Before we dive into the current state of national social media litigation, let’s cover Georgia’s efforts to protect our kids and promote safe social media use. In 2024, Georgia Senate Bill 351 was enacted with the stated goal of protecting Georgia’s children by promoting safe and appropriate technology use and ensuring students develop the skills necessary to become responsible digital citizens. Under SB 351, social media companies would be required to make "commercially reasonable efforts" to verify account holders' ages and prohibit individuals under 16 years of age from using their services unless they obtain the parent or guardian’s "express consent,” including written forms, toll-free calls, videoconferences, and verified emails. Criticisms of SB 351 were lodged by associations representing social media companies’ interests, as well as by other groups such as the ACLU of Georgia.
This law is currently being challenged, and the litigation is ongoing. NetChoice, the social media industry's trade association, filed a lawsuit one year later arguing that this portion of the law is unconstitutional and moving to block its enforcement. The District Court issued a preliminary injunction on June 26, 2025, and Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr filed a notice of appeal immediately thereafter. Earlier this year, Carr’s office filed its reply brief and issued a press release regarding the status of the fight here. A final determination has yet to be made.
Although the General Assembly’s effort to protect Georgians is admirable, there are considerable issues with the practical implications of SB 351. As noted by the ACLU of Georgia, SB 351 bill requires age verification for all users in order to access social media applications. It does not take a tech guru to understand significant problems arise from handing over sensitive data to private companies that have unfettered discretion on how the data is collected and used. Major social media companies have repeatedly suffered massive data breaches exposing the personal information of billions of users. For example, Facebook (now Meta) exposed data for over 533 million users in a 2019 incident where data was scraped and leaked on hacking forums and faced the infamous 2018 Facebook-Cambridge Analytica data scandal where millions of profiles were harvested without consent. The question that comes to my mind is this: do we trust social media companies to safely guard, retain, and use our minors’ personal information? I have serious doubts.
Another criticism of SB 351 rests on First Amendment principles. Laws like SB 351 present constitutional questions about the balance between child protection and individual rights. The intention is good: shield children from harmful or inappropriate content or shield children from addictive apps. However, there are issues with execution. By compelling platforms to filter or censor content deemed inappropriate for minors, these laws risk encroaching upon individuals' rights to access information and engage in online discourse freely, thus implicating First Amendment principles. The argument is that requiring identification to access information and channels of communications improperly restricts speech. Moreover, giving parents too much control over what content children and teens access creates First Amendment risks. For example, parents might use added controls to stop teens from expressing political beliefs or support for certain causes on social media, which runs afoul of teens’ long-establish First Amendment rights in political speech.
As with most issues involving minors and online safety, there are no clear-cut answers and many opinions on the best possible course. However, I am encouraged by the thoughtful conversations on these topics being held at the dinner table, the Attorney General’s office, and Georgia’s Gold Dome.
Where National Social Media Litigation Stands in Mid-2026
Turning to the state of national social media litigation, there are two main battlegrounds. The first is a federal multidistrict litigation (MDL 3047) in the Northern District of California where thousands of claims filed by families and more than a thousand school districts have been consolidated against Meta (Facebook and Instagram), TikTok, Snap, and YouTube. The second is a coordinated state court proceeding (a "JCCP") in California, plus separate suits filed by state attorneys general over the platforms' design features and marketing to minors. Georgia was originally part of a major, bipartisan multistate coalition of 33 attorneys general that sued Meta. However, in November 2024, Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr officially dismissed the state's lawsuit against Meta. His office cited severe resource constraints as the reason they couldn't sustain the costly, long-term litigation required to fight the social media giant's aggressive defense.
Other states and individuals have carried on the pursuit. The core legal theory in these cases is important to understand. Families aren't suing over any single post or video. They are arguing the platforms themselves are defectively designed products and features like infinite scroll, autoplay, streaks, push notifications, and engagement-driven algorithms were deliberately engineered to addict developing brains. It is alleged (and largely substantiated by internal documents at this point) that the companies knew the harm they were causing. The court allowed those design-defect claims to move forward, reasoning that the companies' own design choices are not shielded by Section 230, the law that traditionally protected platforms from liability for user content. That ruling cracked open the courthouse door.
The First Verdicts and Settlements
2026 has been a turning point:
The first jury verdict stuck. In January 2026, the first trial of its kind began in Los Angeles. Over roughly six weeks, jurors heard from Mark Zuckerberg (testifying before a jury for the first time ever), Instagram's CEO, and a YouTube executive. In March, the jury returned a $6 million verdict for a young woman who alleged she became addicted to Instagram and YouTube as a child: $3 million in compensatory damages (Instagram 70% responsible, YouTube 30%) plus $3 million in punitive damages for acting with malice, oppression, or fraud. It was the first time any social media company was found liable for harming a child's mental health. In June, the court refused to throw the verdict out, finding "substantial evidence that plaintiff was harmed by the design features of Instagram, regardless of any of the content found on that platform" and that jurors could conclude from YouTube's own internal documents that its goal was "viewer addiction."
The second trial is weeks away. A second Los Angeles bellwether, brought by a young man known as R.K.C. who alleges the platforms fueled suicidal ideation, body dysmorphia, and an eating disorder, is set for trial July 27, 2026. Rather than face those jurors, YouTube settled in June and TikTok reached a settlement in principle on July 1, which leaves Meta and Snap as the remaining defendants.
The states' case is going to trial too. The federal judge overseeing MDL 3047 denied Meta's bid for summary judgment in the state attorneys general case and set an August 12 advisory jury trial on claims by Kentucky, California, Colorado, and New Jersey. Notably, the court rejected Meta's argument that "social media addiction" isn't a real, diagnosable harm, and pointed to internal documents suggesting Meta's own screen-time tools were more public relations than protection. Massachusetts is pressing a parallel case in its own courts, where the state's highest court ruled in April that Section 230 doesn't shield product-design claims.
A state enforcement win. In March 2026, a New Mexico jury found Meta liable for endangering children by misleading the public about the safety of its platforms.
The first federal bellwether settled. The first federal test trial brought by a Kentucky school district was set for June 2026. Rather than face a jury, Snap, TikTok, and YouTube settled first, and Meta settled on the eve of trial, with the combined deals reportedly worth around $27 million.
More trials are coming. Additional bellwether trials are expected later in 2026, and thousands of individual family claims remain pending in Los Angeles and in federal court.
No one should read these numbers as a guarantee of anything in an individual case. But the pattern is unmistakable: courts are letting these claims reach juries, juries are finding the companies liable, and several platforms tellingly keep settling on the courthouse steps rather than let jurors see their internal documents and hear their executives testify under oath.
What This Means for Georgia Families
Here is my honest take as an attorney who represents injured children: this litigation matters even for families who never file a lawsuit. Discovery in these cases has forced internal documents into the open. The general public is now aware of the research the companies conducted on teen mental health, warnings from their own employees, and design decisions made with full knowledge of the risks. That evidence is already driving legislative change and safety redesigns, like Instagram's teen accounts.
For families whose children have been seriously harmed, a civil claim may be worth exploring. Law firms are considering cases for children or adults if they meet certain criteria. For example, a person diagnosed with suicidal ideations, an eating disorder, body dysmorphia, severe anxiety or depression, or sexual dysfunction may have a strong case if social media caused or contributed to the diagnoses. The strongest cases generally involve a documented mental health diagnosis, significant use of the platforms as a minor, and treatment records connecting the two.
If you believe your child has been harmed, a few practical steps preserve your options. Don't delete the accounts. The account data, usage history, and messages are evidence. Keep records of diagnoses, hospitalizations, and therapy. Write down a timeline of when the problems started and how they progressed. And talk to a lawyer before any deadline questions arise; Georgia generally pauses (or "tolls") a child's own injury claim until they turn 18, but parents' related claims and evidence can slip away much sooner.
The Bigger Picture
I have said this before about daycares, camps, and schools, and it applies equally to trillion-dollar tech companies: accountability changes behavior. These companies did not add teen safety features out of the goodness of their hearts. They added them because parents, school districts, and state attorneys general hauled them into court.
If your child has suffered a serious mental health crisis and you believe social media played a role, I'm happy to talk it through with you: what the litigation looks like, whether your family's situation fits, and what your options are in Georgia. The consultation is free and confidential. Call Mitchell Law at 404-383-2157 or email info@amitchelllaw.com.
This article is for general informational purposes only and is not legal advice. Every case is different, and reported settlements and verdicts in other cases do not guarantee any particular outcome.