Two lawsuits accuse the world’s largest social media companies of harming children, marking the first legal effort to hold companies like Meta accountable for the impact their products have on young users.

Arguments begin today in a case filed by the New Mexico Attorney General’s Office that accuses Meta of failing to protect children from sexually explicit material. Another case in Los Angeles is scheduled to begin later this week, accusing Meta and Google-owned YouTube of knowingly designing their platforms to make children addicted.

TikTok and Snap were also named in the original California lawsuit but later settled under undisclosed terms.

The lawsuits in New Mexico and California are the first of 40 filed against Meta by state attorneys general, specifically alleging that the social media giant is harming the mental health of young Americans.

New Mexico Case

In opening arguments in the New Mexico case first filed in 2023, prosecutors told jurors Monday that Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, failed to disclose the harmful effects of its platforms on children.

“The theme of the entire trial will be that Meta puts profits over safety,” said Donald Migliori, a lawyer representing New Mexico against Meta.

“Meta clearly understands that youth safety is not the company’s top priority…Youth safety is not as important as growth and engagement.”

Prosecutors said they will present evidence and testimony that Meta’s algorithms and account features not only attracted young people and kept them addicted to social media, but also fostered a “breeding ground” for predators who sexually exploited children.

Late last month, during an investigation, the New Mexico Attorney General’s Office said the company failed to take safeguards to protect children from accessing pornographic chatbots on Facebook and Instagram.

In emails obtained by the court, some Meta security staff expressed objections that the company was building chatbots designed to accompany, including sexual and romantic interactions with users, Reuters reported.

These AI chatbots will be released in early 2024. Documents cited in the state’s filing do not include messages or memos written by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. In October 2025, Meta added parental controls to the chatbot.

California case

The California case is broader, alleging that Meta and YouTube, a unit of Alphabet’s Google, deliberately chose designs to try to make their platforms more addictive for children in order to increase profits.

The case centers on a 19-year-old man who goes by the initials KGM. The case could determine how thousands of other similar lawsuits against social media companies unfold.

KGM claims that her use of social media since she was a child made her addicted to technology and exacerbated her depression and suicidal thoughts.

“Defendants borrowed heavily from behavioral and neurobiological techniques used in slot machines and exploited by the tobacco industry to intentionally embed a series of design features into their products designed to maximize youth engagement in order to drive advertising revenue,” the lawsuit states.

Executives including Zuckerberg are expected to testify in the trial, which is expected to last six to eight weeks. It’s unclear whether they will join the New Mexico case.

The tech companies dispute claims that their products intentionally harm children, saying they have added a host of protections over the years and arguing they are not responsible for content posted by third parties on their sites.

“Recently, many lawsuits have attempted to place the blame for teen mental health issues squarely on social media companies,” Mehta said in a recent blog post. “But this oversimplifies a serious problem. Clinicians and researchers have found that mental health is a very complex and multifaceted issue, and trends regarding teen well-being are not clear-cut or universal.”

Narrowing the challenges facing teens to a single factor ignores scientific research and the many stressors affecting young people today, such as academic stress, school safety, socioeconomic challenges, and substance abuse. “

A Meta spokesperson said in a recent statement that the company strongly disagrees with the allegations outlined in the lawsuit and “believes the evidence will demonstrate our long-term commitment to supporting young people.”

Google spokesman Jose Castaneda said the allegations against YouTube were “simply not true.”

“Providing a safer and healthier experience for young people has always been at the heart of what we do,” he said in a statement.

high risk

The outcome of these cases could affect the future of social media.

Eric Goldman, a professor at Santa Clara University School of Law, told Al Jazeera: “In my view, an existential question for social media services is whether they are liable for harm that users suffer as a result of using these services. If so, the damages may be greater than what the defendants bear.”

“We’re talking about huge financial stakes, and we’re also talking about the ability of plaintiffs to veto or potentially overturn editorial decisions by departments about what is in the best interest of audiences,” he said.

“This essentially takes the decision-making power away from the services and puts it in the hands of plaintiffs’ attorneys. So not only is there potential for existential harm, but there is also the potential for a significant loss of editorial control over their services. The stakes couldn’t be greater for social media services or the Internet.”

That’s because the same arguments could be used to formulate claims against video game makers and generative AI, which refers to artificial intelligence that can create original content, including text and video, Goldman Sachs said.

“If these theories don’t work for social media, they might work for video games, generative artificial intelligence, and who knows what else. That’s why I say the stakes are so high for the internet,” he added.

There have been lawsuits claiming that interactions with OpenAI’s ChatGPT led to incidents of suicide and murder-suicide.

On Wall Street, Meta shares were up more than 3% in midday trading.