Social Media Addiction Bid Gets Skeptical Judge Hearing

Social media companies’ arguments that plaintiffs can’t wield a novel legal theory that would hold them liable for the design of their sites were met with skepticism on Thursday from a Los Angeles judge.

Social media giants, including Meta Platforms Inc., Snap Inc., TikTok Inc., and Google LLC, asked Judge Carolyn B. Kuhl in a demurrer hearing to scrap several plaintiffs’ non-product negligent failure-to-warn claims that seek to hold platforms accountable for youth addiction.

But Kuhl pushed back on attorney David Mattern’s argument that those kinds of claims don’t fall within an allowable scope in the state. The framework isn’t ...