Published on 5/30/2026
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Last update: 16:20 (Mecca time)
In a judicial precedent that may reshape the relationship between technology and education, major social media platforms were forced to pay tens of millions of dollars to settle a lawsuit accusing them of causing psychological crises among students, in a case described as one of the most dangerous legal confrontations between schools and technology companies in the United States of America.
This comes after major companies such as Meta, Alphabet, and ByteDance agreed to a financial settlement of up to $27 million, after accusations linking their applications to the deterioration of the mental health of school students in an educational district in Kentucky, according to a Reuters report.
Meta will pay the bulk of this settlement, represented by $9 million, for its social media platforms, Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, according to Reuters, which reviewed the documents of the financial terms of the settlement.
The case also includes several other companies that own social media platforms, including Alphabet, which owns Google and YouTube, Snap, which owns the Snapchat platform, and ByteDance, which owns the TikTok platform.
YouTube will pay $2.01 million, and both Snapchat and TikTok will pay $8 million to complete the settlement. Google will also provide the educational district with special training on its Google Class platform and other company products aimed at students and teachers alike.
Paying the fine does not mean that the companies acknowledge responsibility for the accusations against them, nor does it include any agreements or amendments to the social media platforms it owns, and the documents did not reveal the rest of the court’s conditions.
For their part, the companies denied the accusations against them, stressing that they are taking extensive steps to maintain the safety of minors and teenagers on their platforms.
The compensation paid represents about 8% of the total budget of the Breathitt Educational District, which serves 1,600 students, according to a separate report from Bloomberg.
The settlement opens the door for more than 1,300 other school districts in the United States to sue companies on the same basis, and the first of these trials will begin next February if there is no postponement or prior settlement.
The total value of the settlements filed by the regions amounts to more than $400 billion, according to the Bloomberg report, and there is no indication whether the companies will seek to resolve the issues amicably as well.
A wave of lawsuits against companies
Records from the US District of Kentucky reveal that there are more than 6,000 cases against social media platforms by individuals, school districts, and even prosecutors for various states, according to the report.
All of these cases accuse social media platforms of deliberately designing products that encourage addiction, such as tobacco products, while promoting them mainly to children. The cases specifically mention the advantages that the platforms add to their applications, such as endless browsing and automatic playback of video clips.
The first ruling of its kind
In a related context, the Bloomberg report indicates that the US Los Angeles State Court issued a ruling, the first of its kind, in personal injury cases against social media platforms, finding both “Meta” and “YouTube” guilty of harming a 20-year-old woman who suffers from addiction and psychological pressure.
The damages in this case amounted to $5 million in damages, and a jury in a New Mexico state court also sentenced Meta to pay $375 million in fines as a result of its failure to protect minors from online harm.
If these cases are an indication of what may happen in the future, we may see a series of cases attacking social media platforms and demanding various compensations from them.
