Tech giants face rising child safety litigation as AI expands in schools

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Tech giants child safety litigation

Highlights

Snap confidentially settled a lawsuit alleging psychological distress to teenagers, joining prior Meta, TikTok, and YouTube settlements, with more trials scheduled for March.
Meta agreed in August to pay nearly $17 billion to settle child mental health claims from state attorneys general, while related federal litigation against Meta, TikTok, Snap, and Google remains active.
AI-related litigation is increasing, with Google and OpenAI facing lawsuits over classroom tools and chatbot deployments, prompting heightened legal risk disclosures from companies like Anthropic.

New lawsuits and settlements sharpen scrutiny

As reported by CNBC, several recent cases are intensifying questions about whether large technology platforms are adequately protecting younger users as they roll out new products and features.

Snap this week confidentially settled a case alleging its technology caused severe psychological distress to two teenage users, avoiding testimony in Los Angeles court by Chief Executive Evan Spiegel. Meta, TikTok and YouTube had previously settled with the plaintiffs in the same suit, while a separate jury trial involving social media personal injury claims earlier this year ended in losses for Meta and YouTube.

Joseph McNally, director of emerging litigation at McNicholas & McNicholas, says the settlements suggest companies are trying to limit further public scrutiny after a series of high-profile child safety proceedings. More trials are scheduled to begin in March, and federal litigation involving Meta, TikTok, Snap, YouTube, school districts and state attorneys general remains active.

Meta in August agreed to pay nearly $17 billion to settle with a group of state attorneys general in a child mental health case. Some attorneys general are still pursuing similar claims against rivals, keeping pressure on the sector as courts focus on product design rather than user-posted content, an area long shielded in part by Section 230 protections.

AI classroom rollout adds business and legal risk

Concern is also rising as companies invest heavily in advanced AI models and integrate them into education products, where critics say engagement-driven design can create new safety issues for children. Developmental psychologist Kate Blocker says broader systemic changes in technology design are needed, especially when children are using the products.

Google faces fresh criticism after The New York Times reported that K-12 schools that do not allow Google AI tools for students will lose access to search. That development coincides with a new lawsuit from parents who allege their child suffered a psychological crisis after interacting with the Gemini chatbot in Google Classroom, with the complaint arguing Google moved too quickly to embed Gemini into school Chromebooks.

Google says it is reviewing the lawsuit and takes the claims seriously, adding that it has worked with medical professionals and academic experts on features intended to help young people find trusted support resources. Snap also says it has built safeguards, launched safety tutorials and continues to strengthen safety, privacy and well-being measures for its community.

The litigation trend is spreading beyond social media into AI. OpenAI is facing several lawsuits from state attorneys general and plaintiffs' lawyers, while rival Anthropic highlighted litigation exposure in its prospectus as it prepares to go public this month, despite prohibiting children from using Claude. Michele Neitz, a law professor at the University of San Francisco School of Law, says that signals technology companies expect more litigation risk than they did a decade ago.

ByteDance’s Seed unit launched a dedicated AI safety initiative by creating an Alignment & Preparedness team and opening a global hiring drive for researchers. Our earlier coverage explained that the group plans to devote significant compute and research resources to automated testing, monitoring, and readiness for emerging risks as frontier-model capabilities expand.

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