Google’s YouTube has settled a lawsuit filed by a teenager from Florida who said the platform’s design fed his addiction to social media and harmed his mental health.
The teen, identified in court papers by the initials R.K.C., is 15 years old. His lawyers announced the settlement on Tuesday, June 23, 2026. The terms were not disclosed.
R.K.C. said he started using social media at age eight and grew addicted to it. He pointed to features such as infinite scroll and autoplay, which he said pushed him toward compulsive use. He said the result was anxiety and lost sleep.
His attorneys, John Morgan and Emily Jeffcott, said in a statement that the decision to settle rather than face a jury “speaks for itself.” They added that evidence from an earlier trial showed leadership at these companies “have been strategizing for years to hook children early and maximize their usage.”
Google spokesman José Castañeda said the matter “has been amicably resolved” and that the company’s focus remains on “building age-appropriate products and parental controls that deliver on that promise.” Castañeda also said YouTube has spent more than a decade building the platform responsibly, working with families to make the experience safer for young people. He cited YouTube Kids, a version of the platform for children launched in 2015.
R.K.C.’s case did not end there. He is still suing Meta’s Instagram, TikTok, and Snap Inc’s Snapchat over the same allegations. That trial is scheduled to begin July 27, 2026, in Los Angeles. Judge Carolyn Kuhl of the Los Angeles Superior Court is overseeing the case as part of an effort to resolve more than 1,000 similar lawsuits filed in California.
This is not the first case of its kind to reach a verdict. Earlier this year, a 20-year-old woman from California, identified as K.G.M., sued Meta and YouTube on similar grounds. She had also sued Snap and TikTok, but both settled before trial for undisclosed amounts. A jury found Meta and YouTube liable and awarded K.G.M. $6 million. It was the first time a court held the two companies responsible for the mental health effects of their platforms on a user.
The same week, a jury in New Mexico ordered Meta to pay $375 million for misleading users about the safety of its platforms for children.
Google also settled a separate case last month involving a Kentucky school district, which accused YouTube, Meta, Snap, and TikTok of contributing to a mental health crisis among its students. That case sought changes to the platforms’ features as well as payment for the costs the district incurred addressing anxiety, depression, and self-harm it said were linked to student social media use. The case had been set for trial in mid-June in federal court in Oakland, California, as part of a larger multidistrict litigation. All four companies chose to settle rather than proceed to trial.
A separate trial in that same litigation, brought by US states against Meta, is set to begin in August in the same Oakland court.
