Teens vs. Social Media, Family and Peers:
The Latest Court Cases and Mental Health Research
© 2026 by Bill Eddy, LCSW, Esq.
Children are our future. But are the kids alright? Recent trends offer some hope.
Consequences for Facebook and YouTube
In March, 2026, a landmark court case in California found that Meta (owner of Facebook and Instagram) and Google (owner of YouTube) had purposefully programmed their platforms for compulsive use and had harmed a teenage girl by causing her anxiety, depression, body shame, self-harm and risk of suicide. A jury found them liable for damages of $6 million. “This is the first time in history a jury has heard testimony by executives and seen internal documents that we believe prove these companies chose profits over children,” a lawyer for the teenager said. An expert said: “If there are a series of verdicts for plaintiffs, it will force the defendants to reconsider how they design social media platforms and how they deliver content to minors.” (New York Times, link below)
Also in March, 2026, a jury in New Mexico found that Meta Platforms (Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp) allowed sexual predators easy online access to users under 14, potentially leading to eventual abuse and trafficking. While Meta claimed that it worked hard to protect children online, a state investigation found this did not occur in practice and that lack of age verification, presence of harmful content, and sexual exploitation continued. The jury found 75,000 violations of the state’s consumer protection laws for unfair and misleading trade practices. Meta was ordered to pay damages of $375 million ($5,000 per violation). More court cases are expected to produce specific orders for the company to change its practices in terms of age verification and removing predators. (Reuters)
These cases broke through the shield that these tech giants have used to avoid any consequences for the impact of their popular online platforms. Up to now, they have been protected by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which generally bars lawsuits against websites over user-generated content. We’re not responsible because we’re just hosting other people’s content, has been the essence of their argument for decades. The way these plaintiffs got around that was by proving that these companies actively created algorithms that promoted content and compulsive use.
This approach may sound familiar to adults who grew up with heavy smoke permeating parts of office buildings, restaurants, airplanes, and even hospitals until the late 1990s. After decades of concern that tobacco companies were making their products addictive, in 1998 California and other states finally won court cases against the tobacco companies by proving that they knew that they were making their products addictive and targeting young people. In a Master Settlement Agreement that year, tobacco companies paid over $200 billion in penalties and agreed to change their deceitful advertising practices, including ending their marketing to minors. After this settlement, more strict regulations followed and cigarette use dropped significantly. “Preventing youth initiation is crucial because health experts confirm that most people can avoid becoming addicted to the nicotine in tobacco products if they stay tobacco-free during adolescence and young adulthood.” (State of California, Dept. of Justice newsletter)
These two major court cases are just the first of thousands of lawsuits filed against these social media companies. If more and more cases are found against them, it is expected that they will have to change their methods and protect children more—just as the tobacco companies had to do thirty years ago. In December 2025, Australia started barring children under 16 from using social media and other countries are considering similar laws in Denmark, Spain, and Malaysia. (New York Times)
In the United States, a December 2025 survey found that 98% of schools have some limitations on cell phones during the day with 55% banning all use throughout the entire school day. Rather than pushing back on this trend, most teenagers (76%) also agree with at least some cell phone restrictions. (Brookings)
Teen Mental Health Research
A decrease in the influence of social media on adolescent development may offer an opportunity to reduce the development of mental health problems. Recent research has found that “social experiences, particularly conflicts between family members, bullying or a loss of reputation among peers, are the strongest predictors of psychopathology in adolescents.” Family conflict was the top predictor, including “fighting, arguing and verbal abuse between family members.” The second top predictor was the “social environment, including victimization among peers.” This study was part of the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study (“ABCD Study”) conducted by researchers with Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. (MedicalXPress)
It would seem that a reduction in the use of social media would help avoid some of the worst impacts of bullying by peers. Some other research says that bullying online is mostly done by the same peers that do bullying in person. Yet online bullying is able to be repeated and spread much more widely, to devastating effect.
Because of larger audiences, anonymity, decreased adult supervision “it is feared that cyberbullying may pose a greater threat to child and adolescent health than traditional bullying modalities…. Nine out of 10 adolescents who report victimization by cyberbullying are also victims of bullying in its tradition forms, meaning cyberbullying creates very few additional victims, but is another weapon in the bully’s arsenal and has not replaced traditional methods.” (Armitage)
New Ways for Life
Given the importance of anti-bullying skills and conflict resolution skills, our High Conflict Institute offers a New Ways for Life skills building method for teenagers, generally 12 to 17 years old. This method teaches the “4 Big Skills for Life”: flexible thinking, managed emotions, moderate behavior, and checking yourself. These can be taught in a coaching format by coaches, teachers, youth activity leaders, parents, or even self-taught. There is a Youth Journal that the teen can write in and an Instructors Guide for those who are teaching the method. (Eddy & Rayner)
New Ways for Families
The research shows that family conflict has the greatest impact. Given this reality, our High Conflict Institute has developed several conflict resolution tools. For many years, our New Ways for Families in Separation and Divorce skills training has offered a short-term family counseling method, an online class, or coaching with the online class. These have been court ordered for both parents in many cases, with over 8000 parents having taken one or another approach. More recently we added an online skills training class for intact families, New Ways for Couples and Families.
Any family in today’s world can use strengthened skills for getting along. All of our “New Ways” methods teach calming your upset emotions with encouraging statements; communicating with written statements that are brief, informative, friendly, and firm (BIFF), especially when responding to hostile emails and texts; and making proposals in three steps, which helps people learn to negotiate and make agreements large and small. We keep all of these methods simple and memorable, so that they can be useful even under stress.
Conclusion
In a world where people are preoccupied with blaming each other, a lot of all-or-nothing thinking, extreme emotions, and extreme behaviors, learning skills seems like a very good way to calm things down and to resolve disputes. While social media companies make billions by fomenting clicks and outrage, we all have the ability to extract ourselves and put things in perspective. While teenagers don’t have the brain capacity to resist social media temptations, adults can actually protect them from overuse of social media and teach them big skills for life. It’s easier to build on hope than fear. These court cases give us some signs of hope and the research points us in the right direction for creating some progress.
References:
New York Times
Reuters:
State of California Department of Justice Newsletter:
https://oag.ca.gov/tobacco/litigation
Brookings:
MedicalXPress:
“Family and peer conflicts predict teenage mental health issues, study finds” (2025, October 23) retrieved 27 April 2026 from https://medicalxpress.com/news/2025-10-family-peerconflicts-teenage-mental.html
Armitage R. “Bullying in children: impact on child health.” British Medical Journal BMJ Paediatr Open. 2021 Mar 11;5(1):e000939. doi: 10.1136/bmjpo-2020-000939. PMID: 33782656; PMCID: PMC7957129.
Rayner, S. and Bill Eddy, New Ways for Life: Youth Journal and Instructors Guide, Unhooked Books, 2021.
Eddy, B. and Susie Rayner, New Ways for Couples and Families, https://www.conflictinfluencer.com/offers/SjLVToSP/checkout
BILL EDDY, LCSW, Esq.is a therapist, lawyer, mediator, and the Director of Innovation for the High Conflict Institute. He is the developer of the New Ways for Families methods and the lead author of BIFF for CoParent Communication.
