[HN Gopher] TikTok settles just before social media addiction tr...
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TikTok settles just before social media addiction trial to begin
Author : ourmandave
Score : 81 points
Date : 2026-01-27 20:38 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bbc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.com)
| dylan604 wrote:
| It would be nice if we lived in a world where settlement money
| would not dissuade them from taking their case forward. I know
| that's the world of unicorns and rainbows though, and definitely
| not the world we live in.
| taurath wrote:
| It would be nice if we lived in a world where civil lawsuits
| were not the only way to gain any recompense from companies
| greed, as well.
|
| The law protects companies but rarely binds them, and the law
| binds citizens but rarely protects them. This is the only
| recourse, in our land where wealth and power mean more than the
| rule of law.
| augusteo wrote:
| The timing is interesting. TikTok settles right as jury selection
| begins, Snap settled last week. Meta and YouTube are the ones
| staying in.
|
| I wonder if the settlement amounts will ever become public. The
| Big Tobacco comparison keeps coming up, but those settlements
| were massive and included ongoing payments. Hard to imagine
| social media companies agreeing to anything similar without
| admitting some level of harm.
|
| As a parent of two kids (8 and 6), I think about this constantly.
| We limit screen time pretty aggressively, but it's getting harder
| as they get older. The "attention-grabbing design" part isn't
| some conspiracy theory. These apps are explicitly optimized for
| engagement. The question is whether that optimization crosses a
| legal line.
|
| Curious how the trial plays out with Zuckerberg on the stand.
| dylan604 wrote:
| > We limit screen time pretty aggressively, but it's getting
| harder as they get older.
|
| Curious into what kind of example you as a parent are setting
| in limiting screen time for yourself. For me, it's easy as I'm
| an old fart that has had a longer time without devices than
| with one while also not participating in the socials. We now
| have parents that have had a device for the majority of their
| life having kids that will never know a time without devices.
| So this is an honest bit of curiosity at the risk of sounding
| judgemental.
| OGEnthusiast wrote:
| Why is TikTok always singled out in these social media addiction
| lawsuits? Instagram and YouTube are just as guilty, if not more
| so.
| reenorap wrote:
| Did you read the article? Snapchat, Meta and Google are also
| defendants. Snapchat and now Tiktok have settled.
| davey48016 wrote:
| They are also defendants in the same lawsuit, but they have not
| settled.
| pinnochio wrote:
| "The defendants now include Meta - which owns Instagram and
| Facebook and YouTube parent Google. Snapchat settled with the
| plaintiff last week."
| publicdebates wrote:
| TikTok's algorithm is _significantly_ better and therefore more
| addictive. I 'm speaking from personal experience, having spent
| about 12-14 hours a day on TikTok for probably 360 days during
| 2024. Getting banned from it was one of the best things that
| ever happened to me. Too bad it only happened in Jan 2025. Will
| never get that year back, or the mental health I lost from it.
| (I'm not going to sue, though I could definitely win such a
| suit.)
| izend wrote:
| "I'm speaking from personal experience, having spent about
| 12-14 hours a day on TikTok for probably 360 days during
| 2024"
|
| My jaw is on the floor... Can you provide details of your
| usage, were you just going through video after video for
| 12-14 hours or were you involved in content production or
| something?
| publicdebates wrote:
| Scrolling videos, commenting, expanding my algorithm by
| searching for similar stuff to what I liked, sometimes
| watching lives, sometimes hosting lives or joining lives.
| Maybe about 70% scrolling videos and 28% lives and 2%
| creating.
|
| I should mention that I was very financially successful due
| to TikTok. Around Christmas of 2023, my book got over 20M
| views and shot up to #122 on all Amazon books, until KDP
| just stopped offering it within a few hours. I wonder how
| high it would have gone.
|
| But due to that success, I lost both drive and purpose. I
| had already made it, and it wasn't clear what else I could
| offer the world. So while I thought about it, I scrolled to
| pass the time. But that scrolling was endless and
| addictive. And I never made any progress on figuring out
| the question of what I'm good for.
| iberator wrote:
| Those are not crazy numbers for unemployed people. If you
| want a real shocker: TikTok is EXTREMELY popular amongst
| 60+ men, consuming stuff like teenagers plus super naive...
|
| Just check out hospitals or elderly shelter thing.
| sethops1 wrote:
| I have... so many questions. Not the least of which is, why?
| I gave TikTok maybe 10 minutes of my time, once a year just
| to see what others are seeing. And each time, it was always
| meaningless junk. I'd uninstall the app after; it does
| nothing for me. Why did it captivate you?
| iamflimflam1 wrote:
| Why does one person become addicted to gambling while
| another can visit a casino, try it once and then just walk
| away?
| criddell wrote:
| I'm similar. I've installed the TikTok app a half a dozen
| times and it just doesn't click for me.
|
| YouTube I enjoy more, but I still don't spend much time on
| it. I mostly go on there looking for something in
| particular and don't spend much time scrolling. Their
| recommendations are terrible and creators chasing the
| algorithm is making every interesting corner round.
|
| Instagram I like. I love to see updates from friends and
| family but that runs out quickly so I don't end up spending
| much time there.
|
| Facebook is good for their marketplace when I'm looking to
| buy something or give something away.
|
| Mastodon is boring, X is offensive, posts on BlueSky and
| Threads feel fake and performative. LinkedIn is full of
| journeys and learnings and I'm not interested in either.
|
| HN is the only social media site I visit with any kind of
| frequency.
| anonymars wrote:
| Not 12-14 hours but the novelty-seeking of new stories and
| discussion topics is a compelling escape (especially since
| it'll just be "a few minutes" I think to myself) and then I
| end up getting drawn into conversations and seeing new
| thread responses I should respond to, both of which may
| result in going down additional rabbit holes in order to
| back up the response...
|
| Oh shoot, we were talking about TikTok right?
| jader201 wrote:
| > having spent about 12-14 hours a day on TikTok for probably
| 360 days during 2024
|
| That's a mind blowing statistic, and I'm sure this is much
| more common than we think.
|
| This is why I hope we wake up and realize that social media
| is going to be the ruin of our society. I hope this trial is
| the beginning of the end of social media platforms that prey
| on addictive behaviors.
| SchemaLoad wrote:
| Sometimes when I notice friends drop off from attending
| things or talking in group chats, if it's because they have
| fallen in some pit of social media / internet addiction. I
| agree it's probably more common than we think because the
| people who have fallen in to this state are the least
| visible.
| morleytj wrote:
| This is wild, what were the effects like for you? I imagine
| your eyes and hands would start to see physical effects from
| that level of use for such a consistent time.
|
| What sort of social changes did you notice after that period
| of time?
|
| I've never used TikTok, but the techniques they employ sounds
| seriously addictive.
| publicdebates wrote:
| The main one is a deep sense of defeat. The app would keep
| me there longer than I want. I would waste money ordering
| doordash, or lose sleep, or get drunk, or all of the above.
| Each time, I'd feel like I set myself back a little too
| far. I'd try to ignore the feeling, but wouldn't know what
| to do. What's the default action? Keep scrolling. And of
| course I'd just keep missing more such personal deadlines.
| Then I'd feel more defeated, and keep scrolling. It just
| spirals further and further down, far past rock bottom.
| Maybe it's what advancing the Kola Superdeep Borehole felt
| like.
| buellerbueller wrote:
| Please, sue them. They are harming people, yourself included.
| polshaw wrote:
| (regardless of the fact Google is included in the suit;)
| Youtube is a different model I think. Yes you can burn time
| with it forever if you are bored, but it's not the relentless
| dopamine machine gun that IG and Tiktok deliver. (which is why
| YT tried to get in on that with shorts, but failed).
| winwang wrote:
| (in addition to other replies) I believe there was a study on
| brainrot where, acrosss a few different platforms, TikTok was
| significantly worse than e.g. Youtube. (sry, on mobile or I'd
| ref. hopefully later...)
| mikestew wrote:
| Oh, they're coming for IG, too:
|
| _"IG is a drug": Internal messages may doom Meta at social
| media addiction trial_
|
| https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/01/tiktok-settles-h...
| buellerbueller wrote:
| TikTok is not being singled out in this trial; the plaintiff is
| suing all the Socials; TikTok is merely the one to have settled
| most recently:
|
| https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/01/tiktok-settles-h...
| noitpmeder wrote:
| This case reads like a single individual suing these companies
|
| What is to stop other individuals from filing the same suit and
| expecting similar outcomes?
| reenorap wrote:
| This is the first of many lawsuits that was exactly the same.
| WarmWash wrote:
| Not much.
|
| Class action suites suffer _immensely_ from bad actors
| freeloading on the backs of people actually harmed. I have a
| friend who practices law in the area on some pretty high
| profile medical cases, it 's a chronic problem trying to weed
| out people who were affected from people who shamelessly want
| money. Basically people playing victim to steal from actual
| victims, and even worse, the side doing the weeding is the side
| who originated the harm.
| miltonlost wrote:
| I hope nothing. Maybe if enough people rightfully sue, then
| these companies will be forced into going out of business since
| we can't put the executives away for the crimes.
| boca_honey wrote:
| That sounds like an excellent outcome. Also, I don't think
| executives should go to jail for something like this.
| Commercial social media going out of business and their
| executives paying enourmous fines is the best that could
| happen for the world IMO, but it is also extremely unlikely.
| Andr2Andr wrote:
| It is a bellwether trial, a test of sorts combining hundreds of
| similar cases. See
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bellwether_trial
| DonHopkins wrote:
| I'm addicted to pro-Release-the-Epstein-Files, anti-Trump, anti-
| ICE, and Innocent-Americans-Being-Shot-Dead-in-the-Streets-Then-
| Accussed-of-Being-Terrorists videos, and they just cut me off
| cold turkey, dammit!
|
| TikTok blocks Epstein mentions and anti-Trump videos, users
| claim. Alleged censorship comes after investors loyal to Trump
| take over social media platform.
|
| https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/tiktok-epstein-trump-cens...
|
| >TikTok users in the US have reported being unable to write the
| word 'Epstein' in messages amid accusations that the social media
| platform is suppressing content critical of President Donald
| Trump.
|
| >The issues come less than a week after TikTok's Chinese owner,
| ByteDance, was forced to divest a majority stake in its US
| operations to a group of investors loyal to President Trump, who
| was a close associate with the late convicted child sex offender
| Jeffrey Epstein.
| aaa_aaa wrote:
| It is not about Trump. Think a little deeper.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| It indirectly involves the trump administration due to the
| threats of bannimg it in the US last year, then delaying it
| until they could find an American buyer.
|
| I don't think the recent censorship of US American policy is
| a coincidence when you consider these factors.
| SunshineTheCat wrote:
| I 100% agree with the premise that TikTok is addictive and even
| dangerous to consume in large amounts (that's why I don't consume
| it at all).
|
| But I feel the exact same about cheeseburgers. Should I be able
| to sue McDonalds if I let my kid eat 100 of them in one sitting?
|
| Again, I get the danger here, and I don't like TikTok as a whole.
| I just don't really know where the line is between something that
| the parent is allowing kids to do (like spending a billion hours
| on TikTok), versus something they have no control over (like a
| company badly constructing a car seat, or similar).
| thinkingtoilet wrote:
| I'm trying to read this with the best of intentions, but you're
| saying you really can not tell the difference social media and
| a cheeseburger in terms of access, addiction, and damage?
| SunshineTheCat wrote:
| Yes, of course I understand the addictive difference. The
| point I'm making is: does parental decision making have any
| bearing on this, or can they knowingly allow their child to
| do something harmful and then sue because it turned out
| poorly.
| iamflimflam1 wrote:
| I would say if the companies providing the service do so
| knowing it is harmful and cover that up then yes they can
| sue.
| thinkingtoilet wrote:
| I think we would all agree that parents bear a lot of
| responsibility here. Also, if I think if we look at how we
| treat kids in other parts of society it's very clear it's a
| good thing when highly addictive things are kept away from
| them. It's a good thing cigarette companies can't advertise
| to children. It's a good thing serving children alcohol or
| allowing them to buy weed is illegal. And now that we have
| this new poison, the law hasn't quite caught up yet, but
| this is a poison, and it's being fed to children with a
| ferocity and sophistication that only modern technology can
| provide. A kid can't make a hamburger in their bedroom.
| They can sneak a phone in and use it. I think it's both. I
| shout from the roof tops to every parent who will listen to
| not buy their kid a smart phone. I also think we should
| hold companies accountable when the knowingly get children
| addicted to poison.
| waterheater wrote:
| > can they knowingly allow their child to do something
| harmful and then sue because it turned out poorly
|
| That likely depends on how that "something" was publicly
| marketed to both parents and children based on the
| company's available information. Our laws historically
| regulate substances (and their delivery mechanisms) which
| may lead to addition or are very easy to misuse in a way
| which leads to permanent harm (see: virtually all mind-
| altering substances); even nicotine gum is age-restricted
| like tobacco products. Because nicotine is generally
| considered an addictive substance, it's regulated, but few
| reasonable people would argue that parents should be
| allowed to buy their children nicotine gum so their kids
| calm down.
|
| Consider how, decades ago, the tobacco companies were
| implicated in suppressing research demonstrating that
| tobacco products are harmful to human health. The key here
| will be if ByteDance has done the same thing.
|
| Also, to play off your point on cheeseburgers: remember the
| nutritional quality of one cheeseburger versus another will
| vary. If made with top-quality ingredients (minimally-
| processed ingredients, organic vegetables, grass-fed beef,
| etc.), a cheeseburger is actually quite nutritious.
| However, in a hypothetical situation where a fast-food
| chain was making false public claims about the composition
| of their cheeseburgers (e.g., lying about gluten-free buns
| or organic ingredient status), and someone is harmed as a
| consequence, the victim might have standing to sue the fast
| food chain.
| afpx wrote:
| How would you feel if some weird random strangers set up a
| free cookie hut outside the elementary school? Any kid can
| get as much free candy and cookies as they want as long as
| they go inside and don't tell any adults.
| henryfjordan wrote:
| Cheeseburgers are everywhere, are addictive to some, and
| eventually eating enough will kill you.
|
| Put another way: If McDonalds sees I eat 5 cheeseburgers a
| day, at what point do they have to stop serving me for my own
| health? Do they need to step in at all?
|
| If Facebook knows I'm scrolling 6 hours a day, at what point
| do they have to stop serving me?
| thinkingtoilet wrote:
| A bar has a legal responsibility to stop serving people at
| some point, so this obligation is not unheard of.
| SchemaLoad wrote:
| Cheeseburgers are not everywhere. I'm sitting at my desk,
| social media is here but cheeseburgers are not. Social
| media is always with me other than in the shower.
| Cheeseburgers are not.
| henryfjordan wrote:
| I can get a cheeseburger delivered, or there's a dozen
| places within a 15 minute walk to get one. I can hardly
| leave the house without seeing an ad for one or some
| other fast food item on the side of a bus. I can't avoid
| being hungry, but I can leave my phone at home.
|
| Sure it's a matter of degrees but I don't see a bright
| line between McDonald's and tiktok. Both want me hooked
| on their product. Both have harmful aspects. Both have
| customers they know are over-indulging. Why would only
| tiktok be liable for that?
| SchemaLoad wrote:
| If I had to walk for 15 minutes or pay a hefty delivery
| fee to access social media, my usage would be massively
| lower. If there was a cheeseburger in my hand all day
| every day I would be a lot fatter.
| Mordisquitos wrote:
| > Put another way: If McDonalds sees I eat 5 cheeseburgers
| a day, at what point do they have to stop serving me for my
| own health? Do they need to step in at all?
|
| Is McDonald's adjusting the flavour and ingredients of each
| cheeseburger it serves you with the express purpose of
| encouraging you to order the next one as soon as possible?
| henryfjordan wrote:
| They are constantly evolving the menu and it's entirely
| data-driven, so yes? It's not down to the person level
| like tiktok but if they could, it would be.
| sheikhnbake wrote:
| I think the line is the same as vapes/cigarettes. It's less
| about the product itself and more how its advertised and
| marketed. Internal memos from Meta are pretty damning in that
| they know they're actively harming kids and not adjusting their
| product for harm reduction. I imagine TikTok has the same
| problem, prompting them to settle out early.
| zeroonetwothree wrote:
| The evidence doesn't seem to support your claim that
| cheeseburgers are as addicting as social media.
|
| Maybe if you had picked gambling or alcohol...
| SunshineTheCat wrote:
| That has nothing to do with the point being made. The point
| was about to what level parents are responsible for things
| they allow their kids to do, regardless of how "addictive" it
| is. Particularly if they know it's harmful.
| the_fall wrote:
| I think you might be underestimating the level of control
| that an average parent, especially a working parent, has
| over a teenage kid. Short of taking away devices, it's
| tough, especially if they're going through a phase of doing
| precisely the opposite of what you recommend / demand.
|
| I'm not saying that parents don't have any responsibility,
| but it's about practicalities. If a teenager can easily buy
| smokes or alcohol, many will, no matter what the parents
| say. If you make the goods harder to buy, usage drops. So,
| shops / software vendors do have some responsibility for
| societal outcomes.
|
| In a libertarian utopia, anything goes, but kids are...
| weird in that they often try to push the boundaries of
| their autonomy without always knowing the risk, and it's in
| our collective best interest not to let them go too far.
| anonymars wrote:
| > kids are... weird in that they often try to push the
| boundaries of their autonomy without always knowing the
| risk
|
| I'd argue most adults are just oversized kids in a
| trenchcoat
| dijksterhuis wrote:
| *all
| criddell wrote:
| Your kids are (and should be) doing all kinds of things you
| have no idea about. It's part of becoming an adult. I'm
| sure you modeled all the right behaviors, and provided
| every advantage you could. That helps, but you're influence
| is waning and their friends influence is building and it's
| all manipulated by the thousands of PhD's working for
| TikTok and the other social media companies. You're
| outgunned.
| wasmainiac wrote:
| If my kid gets addicted to fent I will get in shit,
| regardless that Purdue Pharma was found guilty. Point is
| Purdue Pharma is guilty for hooking people on an addicting
| substance.
| samrus wrote:
| Regardless of how addictive it is? So the same argument
| applies to heroin? Shoukd heroin be legalized and allowed
| to be sold outside of schools?
| brailsafe wrote:
| I have doubts most overconsumers of fast food are just
| getting burgers... like effectively nobody. Is it more likely
| that people damage themselves with cheeseburgers or the soda
| that comes with them?
|
| I tried to eat as many cheeseburgers as I could in one
| sitting (I easily eat double the amount of food of others in
| one sitting normally), and tapped out at 10 or something,
| which is impractical and gross, there's a physical limit
| unless you have certain conditions
|
| If you only go to fast food once a week or less with your kid
| as a treat, I feel like you could probably exclude soda and
| fries and tell them to get as many burgers as they want, but
| they have to eat them all, and it would be more of a lesson
| than anything lol
| expedition32 wrote:
| Tech companies know exactly what they are doing. They
| deliberately sell crack to kids- some of the people who make
| money from it are here on HN so good luck with getting any
| honest discussion.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| The US has executed people in international waters over the
| claim of fentanyl being trafficked into the country. Is Insta
| and TikTok as addictive as fentanyl? If so, does it warrant a
| similar response? I think a cheeseburger is not an equivalent
| analogy. Singapore also executes drug traffickers, for what
| it's worth.
|
| https://www.techpolicy.press/is-tiktok-digital-fentanyl/
|
| https://www.foxnews.com/media/tiktok-is-chinas-digital-fenta...
|
| > Certainly, some regard social media generally as addictive,
| and reckon TikTok is a particularly potent format. Anna Lembke,
| Professor of Psychiatry at Stanford University School of
| Medicine, chief of the Stanford Addiction Medicine Dual
| Diagnosis Clinic, and author of the book Dopamine Nation:
| Finding Balance In The Age of Abundance, referred to Tiktok as
| a "potent and addictive digital drug":
|
| > I can't speak to the surveillance piece mentioned in the
| article, but I can attest to the addictive nature of TikTok and
| other similar digital media. The human brain is wired to pay
| attention to novelty. One of the ways our brain gets us to pay
| attention to novel stimuli is by releasing dopamine, a reward
| neurotransmitter, in a part of the brain called the reward
| pathway. What TikTok does is combine a moving image, already
| highly reinforcing to the human brain, with the novelty of a
| very short video clip, to create a potent and addictive digital
| drug.
| wasmainiac wrote:
| > I just don't really know where the line
|
| It is developed to be as addictive like a drug, but it's not
| even fun. Just stupid mind numbing content.gambling does the
| same thing, and many jurisdictions have outlawed it for minors.
| jader201 wrote:
| > But I feel the exact same about cheeseburgers.
|
| The problem with analogies to things like cheeseburgers,
| gambling, drugs, cigarettes, etc., is:
|
| 1. Availability -- you have to go somewhere to
| acquire/participate in these things*
|
| 2. Cost -- you have to have money to spend. That is, it's not
| something you can consume/participate in for free -- you have
| to have money to spend.
|
| * Gambling is theoretically freely available via gambling apps.
| But still comes at a cost.
|
| With social media, anybody can do it for unlimited amounts of
| time, and for free. All you need is a phone/laptop/desktop with
| internet access -- which nearly every person on the planet has.
|
| Addiction + Free + Widely available = Destruction
| Mordisquitos wrote:
| To your points I would add the following difference between
| TikTok on the one hand and cheeseburgers, drugs, cigarettes,
| etc. on the other.
|
| 3. Targeting -- even under the (debatable) premise that they
| are intentionally designed to be addictive, cheeseburgers,
| drugs and cigarettes do not actively target each addict by
| optimising their properties to their individual addiction.
|
| If I am addicted to smoking, the tobacco industry does indeed
| try to keep me hooked, among other things by offering me many
| flavours and alternatives. However, the cigarettes I
| personally consume are not constantly adjusting their
| formula, appearance and packet design specifically to satisfy
| _my_ tastes and desires.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| Yes. Target the algorithms, not the method of delivery.
| Hacker news also counts as social media, but here we all
| are seeing the same feed on the same site with minimal (if
| not zero) tracking to try and extract info from the
| audience.
|
| Even a first step of requiring transparency in the
| algorithms would quickly shatter this stronghold on
| people's minds.
| Mordisquitos wrote:
| Indeed. In fact, you may notice I explicitly left out
| gambling from the list of 'non targeted' addictions. The
| reason for that is that the delivery methods for gambling
| cover the whole gamut from zero to fully personalised
| targeting, and I didn't want that to distract from the
| point.
| AppleBananaPie wrote:
| My personal vice is junk food. I wish they banned junk food.
| I'm not sure how the law would work but it would be objectively
| better for me as a human if they did.
|
| (This is completely disregarding how practical such a ban would
| be)
| DavidPiper wrote:
| You're getting some mild heat in sibling comments here.
| Jonathan Haidt's book The Anxious Generation goes into a lot of
| detail on this exact point about parental responsibility.
|
| There are others that touch on personal vs. societal
| responsibility too and the difficulties with parental/personal
| moderation and change (Stolen Focus by Johann Hari and Dopamine
| Nation by Anna Lembke off the top of my head).
|
| There is an enormous amount of nuance that goes into answering
| your questions and addressing your assumptions that HN is
| probably not a great medium for, if you're serious about
| understanding the answers.
| buellerbueller wrote:
| Scraped from unsealed court/discovery docs about the addictive
| potential of various social media platforms:
| https://techoversight.org/2026/01/25/top-report-mdl-jan-25/?...
| filoeleven wrote:
| Remember: there was a TikTok ban that was signed into law and
| took effect on January 19, 2025 which said that it would be
| allowed back once it was owned by a US company.
|
| Trump did not enforce the ban.
|
| As soon as TikTok changed ownership last week, censorship of
| posts that are not in line with the Trump regime began happening.
| alex1138 wrote:
| I think too much gets made of addiction in a soft sense and not
| enough in a hard sense
|
| If I log off Facebook and it starts spamming me with fake
| notifications, it's addictive in a way that's more than just
| "Facebook provides a great service! I'm on it all the time! It's
| so addictive! :)"
|
| If feeds were chronological and they didn't blatantly lie to your
| face, or you got messages on time (they like not sending it to
| you by email) it wouldn't be addictive in a lab rat style
|
| (This is Facebook, not TikTok, but still. And yes, I know TT
| tries to be addictive on purpose)
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