The record is not a slogan. It is a set of documents.
Most of what the public knows about this litigation is a headline: a verdict, a settlement, a number. The part that decides individual cases is quieter. It is what the companies wrote down, what their executives said under oath, and what the science can and cannot show for one child.
This page is a plain-language guide to that record. It is not legal advice, it does not value any claim, and it does not tell you whether you have a case. It tells you what the documents say, so you can judge for yourself.
Where the record contains a denial, we show it too. A brief that quotes only the damaging half is advocacy. The contradiction is the evidence.
Four things, each with a citation.
These are the recurring findings across the internal-record briefs. Each one traces to a produced document, a deposition, or an expert report.
Engagement was an explicit design goal.
Internal presentations and strategy documents describe making the product an experience returned to daily, and state teen time spent as a business objective. An internal message describes the ranking system as tuned to maximize engagement.
JCCP 04503 – JCCP 00085 – Dkt. 3011-19
The company knew about harm from its own features.
Internal research and executive communications document awareness of harm to young users, including the visible-like-count research behind Project Daisy.
JCCP 01495 – Dkt. 3010-5 – Dkt. 3248-21
The science is substantial, and contested.
Expert reports address adolescent development, addiction, social comparison, and algorithmic recommendation. Defense experts dispute the population inferences. Specific causation for one child is decided by records, chronology, and differential analysis.
Dkt. 3234-1 – Dkt. 3234-3 – Dkt. 3168-10
The claims have survived early dismissal.
Design, warning, and negligence theories have proceeded past motions to dismiss in the federal multidistrict litigation and California coordinated proceedings. The first individual verdict is on appeal.
N.D. Cal. – JCCP 5255 – 9th Cir. Aug. 2026
Three limits we will not paper over.
It does not show that your child was harmed.
Nothing on this site can. That question is answered by a medical chronology, a behavioral record, and an analysis of what else could explain what happened — for one person, over one period.
It does not show that every teenager was harmed.
Population-level association is well documented and genuinely contested as to magnitude and mechanism. A group estimate is not a finding about any individual.
It does not create a compensation fund.
Verdicts, government penalties, and confidential settlements are not a personal- injury settlement program. Government recoveries go to governments, not to families, and no one can honestly quote a value for a case before it is reviewed.
A firm that hides the weaknesses is a firm that will hide them from you later. Naming them is the credibility test we would want applied to us.
The four injuries we review.
The record is shared; the injury is specific. These are the four areas where the design evidence, the notice evidence, and the causation work line up.
Eating disorders and body dysmorphia
Appearance-focused, quantified social media is not a neutral environment for a developing teenager. This page sets out what the internal record documents about the design features, what the company knew, and how causation is…
18 experts consulted - filters - AR effectsSuicide and severe self-harm
Recommendation systems surfacing self-harm and eating-disorder content, alongside the internal "Project Daisy" record of known harm from visible like counts and the remedy that was not fully deployed.
SSI/ED content - like counts - notificationsInpatient psychiatric injury
Hospitalization, residential treatment, and psychiatric harm following sustained compulsive use, reviewed against medical records, treatment history, and the engagement-design record.
Inpatient care - residential treatment - discharge recordsSextortion, grooming, and exploitation
Underage account detection gaps, end-to-end encryption tradeoffs, and recommendation pathways that experts describe as a force multiplier for exploitation.
U13 detection - E2EE - CSAM/CSEC pathways- Do this first
- The evidence is time-sensitive. Preserving the device and the platform data matters more than reading further.
Preserve the evidence, then decide about a lawyer.
You do not need to decide whether to bring a claim to do the useful thing. Platform data is deleted on a schedule; medical records take weeks to request. Both are worth starting today.
This page summarizes a public record for general information. It is not legal advice and does not create an attorney-client relationship.