Snap settles teen distress suit as Google faces Gemini lawsuit

Snap quietly closed the book on a lawsuit accusing its technology of pushing two teenagers into severe psychological distress. The confidential settlement, confirmed this week, kept CEO Evan Spiegel off the witness stand in a Los Angeles courtroom. Meta, TikTok and YouTube had already settled with the same plaintiffs.

Google is now in the crosshairs. The parents of a child who allegedly spiraled into a psychological crisis after chatting with the Gemini AI chatbot in Google Classroom sued the company this week, according to CNBC. Their attorneys claim Google rushed Gemini onto Chromebooks for schoolkids despite known risks. A Google spokesperson said the company is reviewing the claims, calling them something it takes very seriously, and pointed to features built with medical professionals and academic experts to connect young people with support.

The timing is brutal for Google. The New York Times reported Tuesday that K-12 schools blocking students from Google's AI tools will lose access to search — a bundling move that Chris Phillips, the company's vice president for education, defended by saying search and AI are deeply integrated.

Snap's exit wasn't a lone event. It's part of a broader retreat as tech giants try to dodge public scrutiny during a brutal stretch of high-profile child-safety trials, said Joseph McNally, director of emerging litigation at McNicholas & McNicholas. More trials are set to begin in March. And a federal case still looms, pitting Meta, TikTok, Snap and YouTube against school districts nationwide and a pile of state attorneys general.

The damages are already adding up. In August, Meta agreed to pay nearly $17 billion to settle a child mental health case with a group of state AGs, and some AGs are still chasing the company's rivals. Because Section 230 — the 1996 law shielding platforms from user-posted content — doesn't cover product design, plaintiffs are attacking how these apps are built rather than what's on them. AI firms are next: OpenAI faces multiple suits from AGs and plaintiff attorneys making the same design argument about ChatGPT.

Anthropic, planning to go public this month, flagged the risk in its prospectus even though Claude bans children — a signal, said University of San Francisco law professor Michele Neitz, that tech companies now expect more litigation than they did a decade ago. Developmental psychologist Kate Blocker of the nonprofit Children and Screens said AI chat apps are so personalized that predicting what they'll say to a kid is 'a little bit unpredictable,' and urged safety testing from the start. 'Certainly there's a hope that this will motivate real systemic change,' she said.