Alphabet's YouTube and Snap have reached a settlement in the first lawsuit scheduled to go to trial. The series of lawsuits seeks to force social media platforms to cover the costs incurred by school districts in response to the youth mental health crisis — a crisis that school districts accuse the companies of fueling.
The settlements, detailed in court documents filed Friday in federal court in Oakland, California, resolve claims from a Kentucky school district that is still scheduled to file a lawsuit against Facebook and Instagram parent company Meta on June 15.
Terms of the settlement with the Breathitt County School District in rural eastern Kentucky were not disclosed.
"This matter has been resolved amicably and our focus remains on developing age-appropriate products and parental controls to deliver on this promise," a YouTube spokesperson said in a statement.
Snap, the parent company of Snapchat, did not respond to a request for comment.
Currently, more than 3,300 lawsuits involving addiction allegations are pending in California state courts, all with social media companies as defendants. Another 2,400 cases filed by individuals, municipalities, states and school districts have been brought to California federal courts.
In a landmark trial, a Los Angeles jury on March 25 found that Meta and Alphabet's Google were negligent for designing social media platforms that caused harm to young people. A jury awarded a total of $6 million to a 20-year-old woman who said she had been addicted to social media since she was a child.
The companies deny the accusations and say they have taken extensive steps to ensure the safety of teenagers and young adults on their platforms.
The Breathitt School District is one of more than a thousand districts that have sued social media companies, accusing them of causing mental health crises among students and then passing the consequences on to schools.
The district is seeking more than $60 million in damages to offset the impact of social media on students' mental health and to fund a 15-year mental health plan to mitigate the problem.
The district is also seeking a court order requiring the companies to modify their platforms to reduce addictive features.
The case is a "bellwether" or test case for thousands of similar school district lawsuits.
Judges and attorneys often use preliminary judgments to evaluate the potential value of remaining claims and guide settlement negotiations. Typically, several preliminary cases are heard before a broader settlement is reached.