When Design Becomes Harmful: Why Social Media Addiction Harms Trials Could Have Lasting Impacts on Privacy Harm Remediation
Alex Logan
I. Introduction
In late January 2026, a landmark trial kicked off in California via a proceeding led by an unnamed plaintiff, “K.G.M.”. The plaintiff alleges that social media companies/platforms such as TikTok, Snapchat, YouTube, and Meta have intentionally designed platforms so as to addict children and keep them hooked on said platforms through mindless scrolling, auto-play features, other engagement techniques, and suggested or tailored content specific to their individual behaviors.[1] This is just one of several similar lawsuits which are all making their way through the courts.[2] The plaintiffs allege that the addictive design of these platforms has led to long-term mental health issues, such as depression, anxiety, tendencies toward self-harm, and even suicidal thoughts and actions.[3] The social media companies are relying heavily on Section 230 protections and publisher immunity in their defense.[4] These cases collectively could be a major step toward remediating more conceptual harms that plaintiffs have long struggled to prove in similar cases due in large part to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.[5] Successful plaintiff outcomes in these cases could potentially help pave the way for corporate accountability when addressing similarly squishy or conceptual privacy harms through resulting reconceptualization and generation of harm.
II. Don’t Shoot the Messenger? Section 230 Protections vs. Design-Induced Harm
Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act states that “[n]o provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.”[6] This means that social media platforms such as Facebook, X, and TikTok, among others, are not typically considered publishers of the third-party content that is posted by users on these platforms.[7] Thus, social media platforms avoid liability for harms caused by their platforms as long as the companies are not the true publishers of the content. In this way, social media companies have positioned themselves as simple messengers, or voice boxes of the masses, but in California, this proceeding alleges something slightly different: that the harms resulting from children’s use of these platforms, exist not because of the posted third-party content, but because of the intentional design choices of the corporations that operate these platforms.[8] Notably, Section 230 immunity claims by the named companies did not initially bar this lawsuit from moving forward.
III. Reframing Harm
In the case of K.G.M., jurors will be tasked with deciding whether the harm was brought about by defective design features or by the speech of third parties.[9] What the jurors decide could mark a significant shift in how social media companies are held to account for their potentially harmful design choices.
Daniel Solove and Danielle Keats Citron explain that “[p]rivacy harms, often involve injury, not just to individuals but to society . . .” and these sorts of broader harm considerations have often been “. . . omitted from the law’s evaluation of harm because they do not fit the individualistic focus that courts have for recognizable harm.”[10] They also state that, over time, individuals face small privacy harms, such as receiving an unwanted email, an unsolicited advertisement, or the failure to honor the expectation that data will not be shared with third parties, but “. . . such injuries do not fit well into judicial conceptions of harm, which have an individualistic focus and heavily favor tangible physical and financial injuries that occur immediately.”[11] This traditional focus on immediate, tangible harm is exactly what the K.G.M. case will challenge.
Such traditional notions of judicial harm will now be put to the test when examining defective design allegations leading to mental health issues that K.G.M. has developed by using social media platforms for over a decade.[12] This unfortunate outcome, while not a perfect one-to-one comparison of the privacy harms that Daniel Solove and Danielle Keats Citron detail, is far more comparable to other privacy harms that people may face over a longer period of time, such as pervasive behavioral tracking, algorithmic manipulation, profiling, or data leakage. These harms, like design-induced addiction, rarely manifest as a single, tangible, physical, or financial injury that occurs immediately.
IV. Final Thoughts
What makes the California social media addiction cases particularly interesting is not necessarily the potential for damages through personal injury redress, but the reframing of harm itself. If jurors determine that liability attaches not to third-party speech in the K.G.M. case or in some (or all) of the other addiction and design cases, but does attach to corporate design decisions, then courts will have recognized a far more conceptual form of injury to the typical user. That recognition would signal that harm could also stem from a number of potentially harmful architecture choices built upon widespread data collection practices.
The shift would likely matter greatly for privacy law. If design-induced child social media addiction, spurred on by data collection and algorithmic amplification, can constitute actionable harm, then so too may other longer-term privacy harms (not necessarily specific to children) that come about through subtly deceptive design and behavioral manipulation. In this way, the social media addiction trials may do more than address the crucial issues of ensuring child safety and protecting mental health on social media platforms. Even if framed as defective design claims, successful outcomes in these cases could validate the legal authenticity of cumulative privacy-based harms. This outcome could encourage regulators to look beyond the not-always-on-point question of who published the speech and instead ask how is the system constructed, optimized, and deployed? Does it harm through manipulation? Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act may have been designed to protect intermediaries from liability for speech of third parties, but it was certainly not designed to completely immunize corporations from accountability for systems that they themselves construct to maximize user attention, monetize user data, and influence user behavior. These trials may mark a turning point, not only for child safety in tech, but also for privacy harm jurisprudence.
[1] Cecilia Kang, What to Know About the Social Media Addiction Trials, N.Y. Times (Jan 27, 2026), https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/27/technology/what-to-know-about-the-social-media-addiction-trials.html
[2] Id.
[3] Id.
[4] Id.
[5] Valerie C. Brannon and Eric N. Holmes, Section 230: An Overview, Congress.gov (Jan. 4, 2024), https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/R46751.
[6] 47 U.S.C. § 230(c)(1)
[7] Danielle Draper, Section 230- Are Online Platforms Publishers, Distributors, or Neither?, Bipartisan Policy Center (Mar. 13, 2023), https://bipartisanpolicy.org/article/section-230-online-platforms/.
[8] Colin Lecher, ‘We’re Basically Pushers:’ Two California Courtrooms Hear How Companies May Have Hooked Kids on Social Media, CalMatters (Jan. 30 2026), https://calmatters.org/economy/technology/2026/01/social-media-addiction-suits-in-california/.
[9] Tyler Katzenberger & Christine Mui, Social Media Giants Face Landmark Youth Addiction Trial in California, Politico (Jan. 27, 2026), https://www.politico.com/news/2026/01/27/social-media-youth-addiction-trial-00747653.
[10] Daniel Solove & Danielle Keats Citron, Privacy Harms, 102 B. U. L. Rev. 793, 818 (2022).
[11] Id. at 797.
[12] Clay Calvert, High Stakes as Country’s First Social Media Addiction Trial Nears and Snap Settles, Am. Enter. Inst. (Jan. 22 2026), https://www.aei.org/technology-and-innovation/high-stakes-as-countrys-first-social-media-addiction-trial-nears-and-snap-settles/.