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MDL 3047: the federal social-media addiction multidistrict litigation

In re Social Media Adolescent Addiction/Personal Injury Products Liability Litigation, MDL No. 3047, N.D. Cal., Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers; defendants Meta, Google/Alphabet, ByteDance, Snap

This is the raw, evidence-tiered claim ledger behind the MDL 3047 case file. It is published for transparency: the source of truth, with its tiers intact, current as of 2026-07-16.

how to read the tiers

Each claim is tagged by the strength of the evidence behind it, not by how certain it sounds.

  • [ESTABLISHED]: stated in a primary source (a court order or filing, the docket, an official release) or, for a hearing, said on the official record. A fact about what was filed or said, not necessarily adjudicated true.
  • [OBSERVED]: carried by secondary coverage, or by a document read into the record.
  • [ASSUMED]: the distiller's inference, flagged as such.
  • Provenance flags ([interested-party], [advocacy-witness], [single-witness], [lawmaker characterization]) mark a claim that rests on one interested voice: reported, not adjudicated.

Tier key (this record's calibration, per the parent plan): ESTABLISHED means stated in a primary source (a court order or filing, the docket, an official government release) or in the project's verified baseline with independent corroboration; OBSERVED means carried by secondary coverage or inferred from it; ASSUMED means the drafter's inference, flagged as such. This authority-based calibration is the plan's deliberate adaptation for legal records, not the distillation skill's agreement-based multi-source tiers.

Reader summary

This is the big federal case bundling thousands of lawsuits that accuse Meta (Facebook, Instagram), Google/Alphabet (YouTube), ByteDance (TikTok), and Snap (Snapchat) of building their apps to be addictive to kids and teens. All of those cases are being managed together in one federal court in Northern California, in front of U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, under the label "MDL 3047." As of July 1, 2026, 2,893 individual lawsuits were pending in that bundle. In an order filed June 29, 2026 (announced June 30), the judge refused to throw out the claims brought by a group of state attorneys general, so those claims are headed to trial. A first trial starts in August 2026 in Oakland: it combines federal children's-privacy (COPPA) claims from 29 states with consumer-protection claims from four of those states (California, Colorado, Kentucky, and New Jersey). That trial is against Meta alone; the other companies face separate tracks within the same MDL. Meta has said in a court filing that those four states are seeking penalties that could theoretically add up to about $1.4 trillion, a number Meta calls unsupported. Nothing here means Meta or the other companies have been found liable yet; the trial will decide that. (Everything below is current as of July 16, 2026, and litigation like this changes almost weekly.)

Note: This document covers ONLY the federal case, MDL 3047. Separate state-court cases (including a California state proceeding and a New Mexico case, both of which produced their own jury verdicts) are deliberately kept out to avoid mixing up the facts.

Claims (the ledger)

(a) Parties & court

  1. [ESTABLISHED] The case is formally titled In re: Social Media Adolescent Addiction/Personal Injury Products Liability Litigation, MDL No. 3047, and appears on the federal Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation (JPML) docket list. Source: JPML Pending MDL Dockets report, July 1, 2026, page 1.

  2. [ESTABLISHED] The MDL is assigned to U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers in the Northern District of California (district code "CAN"). Source: JPML report, July 1, 2026, page 1; corroborated by the California AG release and the CourtListener docket.

  3. [ESTABLISHED] As of the July 1, 2026 JPML report, MDL 3047 had 2,893 actions "now pending," with a historical total of 3,068 actions ever filed into the docket. The June 1, 2026 report showed 2,664 pending and 2,839 historical, so the count rose by exactly 229 in a month. Source: JPML reports, July 1 and June 1, 2026, page 1 of each.

  4. [ESTABLISHED] The lead consolidated state-AG case carries the individual number 4:23-cv-05448-YGR (People of the State of California v. Meta Platforms, Inc., filed October 24, 2023); the MDL master docket is 4:22-md-03047 (opened October 6, 2022). Source: CourtListener dockets for both numbers; the order caption carries both.

  5. [OBSERVED] The named corporate defendants across the MDL are Meta (Facebook/Instagram), Google/Alphabet (YouTube), ByteDance (TikTok), and Snap (Snapchat). Secondary coverage of the settled bellwether names the defendant set as "Meta, Snap, TikTok, and YouTube." Source: verified baseline; defendant set corroborated by Law Commentary and coverage of the Kentucky bellwether settlement.

  6. [OBSERVED] The state attorneys general are litigating as a coalition; coverage puts the group bringing federal children's-privacy (COPPA) claims to the August trial at 29 states, including California, New Jersey, Kentucky, and Colorado. (The official California AG release refers to "attorneys general nationwide" but does not state a number.) Source: Top Class Actions; JURIST; Engadget; Law.com headline ("29 States Head to Trial"); California AG release (no count). The four consumer-protection states are a subset of the 29; see Tensions (resolved).

  1. [ESTABLISHED] The core theory is product design: plaintiffs allege the companies intentionally built app features to keep young users coming back, and the June 29 order rests its denial of summary judgment on factual disputes over exactly that theory. Court coverage lists the specific features at issue as "infinite scroll, autoplay, notifications and other engagement-focused tools" (feature list as quoted in coverage of the order, not re-verified against the order text). Source: verified baseline; the order (Dkt 3214); the feature list per Top Class Actions' account of the order.

  2. [OBSERVED] A central factual fight is whether "social media addiction" is a real, definable condition. The judge found that "more recent research and statements from the American Psychiatric Association create a factual dispute regarding the existence and characteristics of social media addiction that must be resolved at trial." Meta argues social-media addiction is not an established psychiatric diagnosis; the American Psychiatric Association's position is that the absence of a DSM-5-TR listing does not mean the condition does not exist. Source: Top Class Actions (quoting the order); Engadget.

(c) The June 29, 2026 ruling (announced June 30)

  1. [ESTABLISHED] In an order filed June 29, 2026 (a Monday; announced and widely covered June 30), the court denied Meta's motion for summary judgment as to the state attorneys general's claims, meaning those claims survive and proceed toward trial rather than being thrown out. The California AG describes the motion as "fully denied." Source: the order itself, Dkt 3214 (AG-case Dkt 440), docket stamp "Filed 06/29/26"; Reuters ("decision late Monday") via Claims Journal; California AG press release (dated June 30).

  2. [ESTABLISHED] The denial rested on material factual disputes, including whether the platforms are addictive and whether Meta misrepresented that, which a court cannot resolve on summary judgment and must send to trial. Source: the order text ("material disputes of fact exist"); verified baseline; Top Class Actions' account.

  3. [ESTABLISHED] On one narrower COPPA point, the court gave the states a partial win: it found there is "no factual dispute that Meta did not comply with the statute's notice and parental consent requirements." The California AG frames this as the court agreeing that Meta "did not obtain parental consent in a manner sufficient to satisfy" COPPA. Source: the order, pp. 1-2 ("no dispute exists that Meta has not, in fact, complied"; "summary judgment is GRANTED" on that element); California AG press release.

  4. [ESTABLISHED] This COPPA point is a compliance finding, not a finding of liability. Whether COPPA even applies to the services (questions like child-directed status and the company's knowledge of under-13 users) remains disputed and is left for trial. Source: the order, pp. 1-2 ("material disputes of fact exist as to whether Meta is required to comply"; "a material dispute of fact exists as to whether Meta has actual knowledge").

  5. [ESTABLISHED] In the same order, the court found that Meta's own documents could support the plaintiffs' theory that Meta's time-restriction (screen-time-limit) tools were a "public relations stunt," deployed while the company allegedly knew more time on the platform was linked to worse outcomes for teens. This is cited evidence that could support the theory, still disputed, not a finding of fact. Source: the order, Dkt 3214, p. 23, verified in the RECAP PDF on 2026-07-16. (Audit trail: this claim was originally tiered OBSERVED because its only known carrier, a Law.com article, returned HTTP 403; the 2026-07-16 audit verified the phrase in the order itself. The original flag was an access failure, not a disconfirmation.)

(d) The August trial + follow-on

  1. [ESTABLISHED] The first trial is set for August 2026 in Oakland, California. Jury selection begins August 12, 2026, and opening statements begin August 18, 2026. Source: California AG press release.

  2. [OBSERVED] The August trial combines two sets of claims: the 29 states' consolidated federal COPPA claims and consumer-protection claims from four of those states: California, Colorado, Kentucky, and New Jersey. The defendant at this trial is Meta alone (Meta Platforms, Inc. and Instagram, LLC); Google, TikTok, and Snap are MDL defendants in the separate personal-injury and school-district tracks, not in the AG trial. Source: JURIST; Engadget; Law Commentary; Top Class Actions; the Meta-only point per the order caption (California et al. v. Meta Platforms, Inc.) and the trial-motion filers on the docket (primary).

  3. [ESTABLISHED] The trial is structured to use an advisory jury. Meta had demanded a jury, then moved to withdraw that demand (motion filed March 3, 2026, Dkt 2807, heard April 15, 2026); the judge agreed and decided to empanel an advisory jury to hear the evidence and give its view while she retains the ultimate findings. She is expected to decide the federal COPPA claims herself and use the advisory jury chiefly on the state consumer-protection claims. The advisory jury's exact scope (for example, on civil penalties) was still disputed between the parties as of mid-July. Source: MDL docket (Dkt 2807); the joint pretrial statement, Dkt 470 ("the advisory jury that the Court has decided to empanel"); Law Commentary; Law360/MLex headlines. (The granting ruling appears to be a minute order not available in RECAP full text.)

  4. [OBSERVED] A second trial for 14 additional states' own state-law claims is scheduled for February 2027. Do not conflate it with a different February 2027 event in the same MDL: the first school-district bellwether (a Tucson case) is also expected then, per Meta's own filing. Source: Engadget; Reuters via Insurance Journal; Meta's trial-setting opposition, Dkt 3259 (the Tucson point). (The scheduling order itself was not located.)

  5. [OBSERVED] Counting all venues together, more than 40 state attorneys general have brought claims in the overall litigation: 33 states filed the joint federal complaint on October 24, 2023, Florida filed its own federal suit the same day (the source of "34" in some counts), and additional attorneys general filed in state courts, for roughly 42 total. The August-2026 and February-2027 federal trials divide claims, not states: since 29 plus 14 exceeds the federal-filer count, the 14 necessarily overlap the 29. Source: California AG October 2023 release ("bipartisan coalition of 33"); JURIST ("more than 40 state AGs"); NBC/TechCrunch (October 2023 counts). (No accessible source enumerates the exact 29 or 14 rosters; flagged in Tensions.)

(e) Money / exposure

  1. [ESTABLISHED] In its own court filing, Meta characterized the four states' potential penalty exposure as up to about $1.4 trillion ("the AGs' unsupported $1.4 trillion-dollar claim"). Source: Meta's penalty submission, Dkt 455, filed July 6, 2026 (RECAP, fetched 2026-07-16); corroborated by JURIST, Engadget, Law Commentary.

  2. [ESTABLISHED] The $1.4 trillion figure comes from multiplying a very large count of qualifying young users by the maximum per-violation statutory penalty under each applicable law. Meta's filing describes the states' method as counting penalties for "every single month in which a teen uses Meta's platforms for more than a half-hour"; the states' Remedy Chart 2A is titled accordingly ("Monthly Instances of Teen Users Exceeding ... Over 0.5 Hours"). Source: Dkt 455; the Remedy Chart exhibit (Dkt 465-5) per the docket; JURIST and Law Commentary for the method framing.

  3. [ESTABLISHED] Meta's filing argues the demanded remedies are "entirely unmoored" from the claimed deceptive statements or unfair practices, and that "a sanction of that size has no analog in the history of consumer protection enforcement." Meta also contends each state-law penalty must be tied to a separate, affirmative act of wrongdoing and raises due-process concerns. Source: Dkt 455, pp. 1-2 ("entirely unmoored") and p. 12 ("no analog"), verified in the RECAP PDF on 2026-07-16; JURIST (the separate-act and due-process arguments). See Discrepancies: the phrase "extraordinary and unjustified," previously quoted here as Meta's words, is an outlet's unquoted paraphrase and appears nowhere in the filing.

  4. [ASSUMED] The $1.4 trillion figure is a theoretical statutory ceiling, the largest number arithmetically possible under the penalty formula, not a demand any court has awarded or is likely to award in full. This is the drafter's characterization of how statutory-maximum penalty figures work, offered for reader context; the exact number the states will actually seek at trial, and any amount a court might award, are not established in the record reviewed here.

(f) Settlements

  1. [OBSERVED] All four defendants settled the first federal school-district bellwether (brought by the Breathitt County School District in Kentucky) before it reached a jury, in May 2026: Meta settled May 21, 2026, a few weeks before a planned June trial, and the co-defendants settled earlier the same month. The settlement agreements, obtained by Reuters through a public-records request (the plaintiff is a public entity), total about $27 million: Meta $9 million, Snap $8 million, ByteDance $8 million, Alphabet $2.01 million. The terms were not disclosed in court, but the amounts are documented from the agreements themselves, not estimates. Source: Reuters via Yahoo Finance; WKYT; Law Commentary; verified baseline (corrected: the baseline and an earlier version of this document called it a "personal-injury" bellwether; it was the first school-district bellwether).

  2. [OBSERVED] The bellwether settlement involved no admission of liability and produced no publicly disclosed, enforceable design standard; the disclosed agreement terms are monetary. Source: verified baseline; Reuters via Yahoo Finance (terms as obtained).

(g) Current status (as of 2026-07-16)

  1. [ESTABLISHED] The state attorneys general's claims survived summary judgment (order filed June 29, 2026) and are headed to trial; the first trial (29-state COPPA plus 4-state consumer protection, against Meta alone) begins with jury selection August 12, 2026, opening statements August 18, 2026, in Oakland. The MDL's final pretrial conference was set for July 17, 2026. Source: the order (Dkt 3214); California AG release (dates); Dkt 470 (pretrial conference).

  2. [OBSERVED] No defendant has been found liable in MDL 3047 as of this document's date; liability on the surviving claims remains to be decided at the August trial and the February 2027 trial. Source: reasonable synthesis of the June 29 ruling (denial of summary judgment leaves liability for trial) and the compliance-not-liability nature of the COPPA finding.

Tensions / open questions

  • Are the "four states" a subset of the "29 states"? RESOLVED (2026-07-16): subset. Law.com's headline counts the first trial at 29 states total; Reuters describes the COPPA claims plus consumer-protection claims from CA/CO/KY/NJ; all four are among the original 33 federal filers. No source lists the four as additional to the 29. Caveat: the subset reading is a well-supported inference across sources; no single source states it in one sentence.
  • "Terms formally undisclosed" vs. specific settlement dollars. RESOLVED (2026-07-16). Reuters obtained the actual settlement agreements through a public-records request, so the per-defendant amounts (claim 23) are documented terms, not reported estimates. "Not disclosed in court" remains true.
  • "Bellwether" is used for different things. The settled bellwether was the first school-district test case (Breathitt County). The August trial is the state attorneys general's trial. A first school-district bellwether trial (Tucson) is expected February 2027. All get called "bellwether" in coverage; they are different tracks within the same MDL and should not be conflated.
  • The "$1.4 trillion" is a ceiling, not a verdict. It is Meta's own framing of the maximum arithmetic exposure. What the states will actually argue for, and what a court could award, are unresolved.
  • The exact rosters of the 29 (August) and 14 (February 2027) states are not enumerated in any accessible source.

Sources

← the MDL 3047 case file

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