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Seeger Weiss is proud to announce founder Chris Seeger has been appointed to serve as co-lead counsel in the In Re: Social Media Adolescent Addiction/Personal Injury Products Liability Litigation by the honorable Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers. Seeger was one of three lawyers selected to lead the multidistrict litigation pending in the Northern District of California, out of 24 attorneys interviewed.
“I am honored to have been chosen by Judge Gonzalez Rogers to lead this extremely consequential litigation,” said Seeger. “For years, Meta, Snap, TikTok, and YouTube deliberately designed and developed their platforms to addict children, precipitating a youth mental health crisis. I look forward to working with the leadership team to hold these social media companies accountable for inflicting widespread harm on our society’s most vulnerable members.”
Over the past decade, social media addiction has risen dramatically among children and teenagers, with 35% of all U.S. teens saying they are on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok or Snapchat “almost constantly,” according to polling from Pew Research Center. And this trend has clearly contributed to a mental health epidemic among American children. Scientific studies consistently show that heavy social media use causes serious mental health issues, including self-harm, depression, anxiety, eating disorders, sleep deprivation, and suicide among teenagers.
Hundreds of families have filed product liability lawsuits against social media companies, including Meta Platforms, Inc., Snap, Inc., Google LLC, and ByteDance Ltd. Plaintiffs allege these companies have intentionally designed their products to promote addictive and self-destructive behavior and failed to provide protections to minor-aged users on their platforms.
One of the nation’s preeminent plaintiffs’ law firms, Seeger Weiss is best known for multidistrict mass torts and class actions in both state and federal court. From offices in New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, the firm has represented over 10,000 individuals, companies, and governments across the U.S. who have been injured or defrauded on a massive scale.
Since its founding in 1999, Seeger has led many of the most complex and high-profile cases in the country: the National Prescription Opiate Litigation, which the Washington Post called “the largest federal court case in U.S. history”; 3M Combat Arms Earplug Products Liability Litigation, which the Minneapolis Star Tribune called “one of the largest mass torts ever”; the “Dieselgate” scandal; and the history-making National Football League Players’ Concussion Injury Litigation.