Four States Sue Meta for $1.4 Trillion Over Teen Users Four U.S. states have filed suit against Meta Platforms Inc., accusing the company of using addictive algorithms to hook minors and of concealing the mental-health effects of its products. The damages sought run as high as $1.4 trillion, one of the largest figures ever attached to a state consumer-protection action. Combined with earlier cases, lawsuits by 29 states are now pending against the company over the same set of allegations. The new complaints, filed in state courts, describe a company that tuned its recommendation systems to maximize the time young users spend in its apps, then withheld internal research that linked heavy use to anxiety, depression and disrupted sleep. The states argue that Meta knew about the harms and chose engagement metrics over the welfare of its youngest users. Attorneys general leading the cases said the evidence includes internal documents and former-employee testimony gathered over years of investigation. Meta denied the allegations and said it would fight the cases. The company points to parental controls, age-verification tools and content safeguards it has added in recent years, and argues that the platforms now have protections that did not exist when the conduct alleged in the complaints occurred. A spokesman called the lawsuits a repetition of claims that courts have already rejected in part. The $1.4 trillion figure is calculated, the states say, on the basis of the profits Meta earned from minors and the cost of the harm to families, including treatment for conditions that research has linked to social media use. Legal experts said the number is designed to make a point rather than to survive scrutiny. Damage awards in such cases are rarely set at the ceiling, but the size of the claim gives the states negotiating power in settlement talks and keeps the issue in the headlines. Whatever the eventual award, the litigation forces Meta to spend on defense and distracts management from its product agenda, which lawyers for the states said is part of the design. The cases arrive as regulators on both sides of the Atlantic tighten the rules around children’s online safety. In the U.S., state attorneys general have spent years building the evidence base, sharing documents and coordinating legal theories. The push has bipartisan support, and several states have already enacted their own age-verification laws, creating a patchwork that Meta says is impractical to administer. In Europe, the pressure is coming from Brussels. The European Commission has issued a preliminary report under the Digital Services Act calling on Meta to change design features it considers addictive, including autoplay and infinite scroll. If the company fails to address the concerns, it could face a fine of up to 6 percent of its global annual revenue, a penalty that would run into the billions of dollars on Meta’s current sales. Meta has said it is reviewing the commission’s findings and intends to cooperate, but the company’s public posture toward the DSA has hardened in recent years. It has challenged other commission decisions and argued that European rules are being applied to American platforms in ways that disadvantage them against domestic rivals. The autoplay and infinite-scroll features at issue are core to how its apps hold attention, which makes the commission’s demands harder to accommodate than a fine. The two fronts are moving on different timetables. The European process could conclude in a matter of months, with a final decision and a potential fine. The state lawsuits will take years to wind through discovery, motions and trials, and the first of them may not reach a jury until late in the decade. Meta’s defense will lean on the First Amendment, on Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, and on the argument that the platforms are not the sole cause of the harms young people experience online. Investors have so far taken the legal risk in stride. Meta shares have held their ground through the wave of filings, because the market has priced in years of litigation rather than an imminent judgment. The bigger financial exposure, analysts said, may come from the European track, where the commission can move faster and the penalty is tied to revenue rather than to damages a jury must be convinced to award. The cases also raise questions about how platforms measure success. Internal documents cited by the states describe engagement metrics that were optimized without a full accounting of the effects on young users, a pattern regulators in several countries have begun to investigate. Meta has responded by publishing transparency reports and commissioning its own research, but the company’s critics say the disclosures have not matched the scale of the concerns. The coming discovery phase will determine how much of that internal record becomes public, and both sides expect the fight over documents to be intense. Meta has already won some procedural battles, but the states have prevailed on others, and the volume of material moving between the two sides is growing by the quarter. For Meta, the immediate question is whether the new filings change the politics of the issue. Four more states joining the litigation broadens the coalition, and every added plaintiff makes it harder for the company to argue that the problem is isolated or exaggerated. The company’s answer, so far, is the same in every forum: the claims are wrong, the protections are real, and it will defend the cases on the merits. The courts will decide who is right, and the bills, if any, will come due years from now.