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one possible outcome of the case is a settlement into a fund that states can use to address harms like social media addiction.

Despite some similarities, Skrmetti said “there’s no perfect analogy.”

What the companies have to say

José Castañeda, a spokesperson for Google, which owns YouTube, denied the allegations against the company and said YouTube has “built services and policies to provide young people with age-appropriate experiences, and parents with robust controls.”

A TikTok spokesperson said that the video-sharing app has “industry-leading safeguards” for young people, including “an automatic 60-minute time limit” for users under 18 and parental controls for teen accounts.

Meta highlighted some of its practices for age verification, which include monitoring by artificial intelligence to flag users whose age appears inaccurate. Meta added it is advocating for federal legislation to require app stores to get parental approval whenever teens under 16 download apps.

“We will continue to defend ourselves vigorously in these cases and believe the evidence will demonstrate our long-standing commitment to supporting young people,” the Meta spokesperson said.

Snap, which owns the picture-messaging app Snapchat, focused on its differences from other social media apps, including how it opens directly to a camera and lacks traditional public likes or comments. The company said it “will always have more work to do” but “feel(s) good about ... helping close friends feel connected.”

Where do things stand now?

It’s still pretty early on. There are two main cases — one in California state court and another in federal court, where hundreds of lawsuits from minors, parents, attorneys general and a handful of local governments have been combined for pretrial proceedings. Some other cases, like the Tennessee attorney general’s, are in other state courts.

In the federal case, Long, the law professor, said it will likely take years before a resolution is reached either through trial, settlement or a judge dismissing the case. Exactly how long depends partly on how far up the ladder the case makes it — and it’s possible the issue may eventually end up in the Supreme

Court.

The biggest development so far in both of the two main cases is that the plaintiffs survived an early attempt from the social media companies to throw the cases out. The companies rested the bulk of their arguments on the First Amendment and Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which gives providers general immunity from liability for content made by users of their site.

In both cases, the plaintiffs made it through, but not without taking a few hits.

“The plaintiffs won a little bit, and they lost a little bit,” Long said of U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers’ October ruling on the companies’ motion to dismiss. “That first ruling gave both sides something to be unhappy about and something to be happy about.”

A unique challenge

One question for lawyers is whether the social media platforms are “products” for the purposes of product liability law. It’s a term courts have typically been hesitant to apply to intangible goods.

“Product liability was conceived with the idea that the product in question was going to be something like a Coke bottle that explodes or a (Ford) Pinto that explodes,” Long said. “It wasn’t initially designed with technology like this in mind.”

One of the most frequently cited cases on the issue was over a book that identified edible and poisonous mushrooms. After one reader almost died because a poisonous mushroom was listed as safe, he sued.

In the end, the publisher got off the hook, since the judge ruled that the information in the book was not legally a “product” — the physical book, its pages and cover, was.

“That decision is a very 20th century conception of what a product is,” Long said. “That’s the precedent that somebody is … going to have to overcome.”

So far, things have gone well for the plaintiffs in federal court on this front. Gonzalez Rogers, the federal judge, ruled at a preliminary stage that many aspects of the platforms are products for which the companies could be held liable.

But the issue will likely still come up later in the case.

Rachel Wegner contributed to this story.

Reach justice reporter Evan Mealins at emealins@gannett.com or follow him on Twitter @EvanMealins.