A 15-year-old Florida plaintiff, identified only as R.K.C., has dropped his lawsuit against Meta alleging he had become addicted to and harmed by using platforms including Instagram. He had recently settled similar claims against TikTok, Snapchat and YouTube, and his case against Meta had been due to go before a Los Angeles jury next week. Meta said it received no payment for the withdrawal and framed it as vindication, saying the claims "never held up" and that it would continue defending itself against what it called baseless lawsuits.

The teenager had argued that addictive design features such as infinite scroll and autoplay drove compulsive use, causing anxiety and sleep deprivation. His case forms part of a much larger set of proceedings in Los Angeles Superior Court, where hundreds of similar lawsuits are being overseen and a small number selected for trial, with the next due in October. In an earlier trial involving a different plaintiff, a jury found Meta and YouTube liable for harming a young woman's mental health and ordered $6m (£4.4m) in damages, the first such liability finding against social media firms; both companies are appealing. Meta has also faced other costly settlements, including an undisclosed sum with a school district in May and a $375m penalty imposed by a New Mexico judge over misleading safety claims.