You remember who they were before. The door started closing. The phone stopped leaving their hand. Sleep went, then appetite, then the version of them you knew. You tried limits and lost the argument, or you won it and lost something else. You were not fighting your child. You were fighting a system built by people who measured, tested and optimised exactly how to hold their attention.
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The 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline is free and available 24 hours a day — call or text 988. You can call it about your child, not just yourself. The Crisis Text Line is available by texting HOME to 741741.
For eating and body image concerns, the National Alliance for Eating Disorders helpline is staffed by licensed clinicians at 1-866-662-1235.
And if you are a teenager reading this yourself: what you are feeling is real, it is not a character flaw, and it is not something you have to manage alone. Those numbers are for you too, and telling one adult you trust is a completely reasonable first move.
Parents replay every decision — the first account, the rules they did not enforce, the arguments they lost — and land on themselves.
It feels impossible to separate a platform from everything else in adolescence.
Internal company research, engagement data and design decisions have come out through discovery. A jury has already heard this evidence once and found against two companies. Nobody expects a parent to prove causation on their own.
Families assume ongoing use undermines any claim, or proves it was never that bad.
Continued use does not defeat a claim. Whether and how to change access is a decision for you, your child and their clinician — it has nothing to do with the legal question.
Protecting a child from further strain matters more to most parents than any recovery.
The first conversation is with you, not your child. Most cases never reach a courtroom, and a firm should explain what any participation would involve well before it happens.
— Compensation
A claim cannot give back the years. What it can do is pay for the care your child needs and place the cost with the companies that designed the product.
— What happens next
Which platforms, the age heavy use started, and what your child has been treated for. Two minutes, free, no obligation.
Usually within a day. That firm reviews the case independently and decides whether to take it. If it does, you sign directly with them.
Treatment and counseling records, school records, and platform account and usage data. Much of the evidence about how these products were built comes from the litigation itself, not from your family.
Filed in MDL 3047 or an appropriate state court. Your firm keeps you updated through the appeals and trials ahead. You are never required to accept an offer you do not want.
That is what the review is for, and you will get a straight answer — including if the answer is no. It costs nothing either way.
— The no-fee promise
Participating firms take these cases on contingency. The fee is a percentage of any recovery. If there is no recovery, no attorney fee is owed.
No retainer. No hourly billing. No bill arriving while you are already paying for therapy that insurance would not cover.
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— Filing deadlines
Deadlines in these cases are rarely counted from the day you were exposed or treated. Most states apply a discovery rule, meaning the clock starts when you knew, or reasonably should have known, that your illness might be connected to the product. For many people that is years later than they assume.
Select your state
This is the single most common reason a viable claim never gets filed — not that someone missed the date, but that they assumed it had passed and never asked.
Most people guess, and a lot of them guess wrong in the direction that costs them the claim. Finding out takes about two minutes and costs nothing.
Participating law firms are generally reviewing claims where heavy use of Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Snapchat or YouTube began before the age of 18, and a diagnosed mental health condition followed. That usually means depression, anxiety, an eating disorder or body image disorder, self-harm, or a mental health crisis. Many firms review claimants who are 25 or younger now. Families who lost a child may bring a wrongful death claim.
No. Every parent you know made the same decision, usually because the alternative was a child cut off from their entire social world. These lawsuits are not about screen time rules or parenting choices. They are about whether these products were deliberately engineered to hold a young person’s attention, and whether the companies understood the effect on teenagers and said nothing.
Several things, and they cut in different directions. In March 2026 a Los Angeles jury awarded $6 million against Meta and Google in the first individual trial, finding malice, oppression or fraud. Both companies are appealing. Snap and TikTok settled that case confidentially before trial without admitting liability. Separately, a New Mexico jury found Meta violated state consumer protection law and ordered $375 million in civil penalties. In a later bellwether, several defendants settled and the teenage plaintiff then dropped his remaining claim against Meta.
No, and this is widely misreported. That settlement in May 2026 resolved a claim brought by a Kentucky school district, not by any family. School districts sued over the cost of responding to a student mental health crisis, and their claims are a separate track from individual injury claims. No family has received a payout under any global settlement, because no global settlement exists.
No. Continued use does not defeat a claim and is not treated as evidence that nothing is wrong. Compulsive use is the core of what these lawsuits describe. Whether and how to change your child’s access is a decision for you, your child and their clinician, and it is separate from any legal question.
Most claims resolve without a young person ever appearing in court. The first conversation is with you as the parent. If a case advances, your firm should explain in advance what any participation would involve and work to keep it as limited as possible. Claims involving a minor also generally require court approval of any settlement, which exists to protect them.
Nothing. The review is free and confidential with no obligation. If a participating law firm takes the case, it will normally work on contingency, meaning the fee comes out of a recovery and no attorney fee is owed if there is no recovery.
Ask on the call, or by email first if that feels easier. There is no obligation either way.
