Montgomery County on Tuesday sued some of the nation’s largest social media companies in a Northern California federal court, joining nearly 3,000 actions from parents, school districts, cities, counties and states that say the platforms are harming the mental health of children and teens.
The social media giants have faced a flood of litigation in state and federal courts, part of a public reckoning over the negative impacts their products are accused of having on young people. The lawsuits allege that the companies have developed platforms that are addictive, especially to young people, and contribute to negative self-image and social isolation.
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Montgomery County is suing Meta, ByteDance, Snap, and Google on behalf of the county’s 148 schools and over 180,000 minor students, the filing said. It accused the companies and their popular products — including Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, and TikTok — of negligence and creating a public nuisance.
“Too many young people are struggling with anxiety, depression, self-harm, and other serious mental health challenges,” Jamila Winder, chair of the Montgomery County Commissioners, said in a news release Wednesday. “We believe social media companies must be held accountable for the role their products play in harming young people.”
Montgomery County’s lawsuit is one of nearly 3,000 cases before a Northern District of California judge through a mechanism called multidistrict litigation. The process allows a federal court to handle large volume of complaints that are similar in one court, usually leading to a number of bellwether trials that help assess the value of a potential global settlement.
The suit is part of a larger partnership between the county board of commissioners and the district attorney’s office “to proactively identify, investigate, and pursue cases against companies whose actions harm consumers or create illegal costs for taxpayers,” according to the news release.
The 2025 Pennsylvania Youth Survey found that 97% of youth respondents have a phone that can access the internet, 81% have a social media account, and 24% spend four or more hours on a school day on social media.
Those habits are reflected nationwide. As many as 95% of American teens are on social media platforms, and a third report using them “almost constantly,” according to research cited in a 2023 advisory by the U.S. Surgeon General’s Office and highlighted by Montgomery County in its news release Wednesday.
Teens who spend more than three hours a day on social media platforms have double the risk of depression and anxiety, and half of teens report that social media makes them feel worse about the way they look, according to the advisory.
Spokespeople for TikTok and Snap did not immediately respond to requests for comment Wednesday.
José Castañeda, a spokesperson for Google, said in a statement to The Inquirer Wednesday that “the allegations in these complaints are simply not true.”
“Providing young people with a safer, healthier experience has always been core to our work,” Castañeda said. “In collaboration with youth, mental health and parenting experts, we built services and policies to provide young people with age-appropriate experiences, and parents with robust controls.”
A Meta spokesperson also objected to the allegations, saying the company is “confident the evidence will show our longstanding commitment to supporting young people.”
“We’ve listened to parents, worked with experts and law enforcement, and conducted in-depth research to understand the issues that matter most. We’re proud of the progress we’ve made, and we’re always working to do better,” the spokesperson said.
Jury selection began Wednesday in the first of the Northern California trials against the social media giants, part of a case against Meta brought in 2023 by 29 states, including Pennsylvania and New Jersey. The trial itself focuses on New Jersey and three other states.
Meta said that damages in the case could reach $1.4 trillion, according to Reuters, which is not far from the $1.5 trillion market cap of the company that owns Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp.
(In May, Meta settled for an undisclosed amount in a case brought by a rural Kentucky school district before jury selection took place. The case was slated to be the first bellwether trial in the centralized litigation.)
In 2023, Bucks County also filed a lawsuit in the litigation concentrated in California federal court.
The social media giants face litigation elsewhere, too.
Also on Tuesday, Pennsylvania Attorney General Dave Sunday sued ByteDance, the company behind TikTok, in an Pittsburgh state court. That lawsuit accuses the company of creating an intentionally addictive platform, and serving inappropriate content to teens as young as 13.
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The companies have argued in courts across the country that they are protected by federal laws that govern the internet, which were enacted before the advent of social media, complex algorithms, and personalized feeds.
The social media platforms themselves can’t be held liable for the content other people post, the companies previously argued in court. And, they said, social media addiction is not an established diagnosis and mental health harm can’t be directly link to use of a platform, app, or website.
But jurors in the first trials over social media’s harmful effects rejected most of the companies’ arguments. A New Mexico judge ordered Meta to pay nearly a billion dollars this month, combing a $567 million verdict and $375 million civil penalty, after a jury found the company committed 75,000 violations of the state’s Unfair Practices Act.