Social Media Harm Class Action

Why this matters

While every parent wants to achieve a reduction in children’s excessive screentime, social media companies have been optimising systems designed to defeat that effort.

This proposed class action seeks compensation from Meta for harm caused by tools specifically designed to capture attention for as long as possible and build Meta’s stake in the “attention economy”. Facebook and Instagram are alleged to drive excessive use among children and teenagers. Meta is also alleged to have misled families about the risks of harm it knew it was distributing.

The attention economy

Algorithmic feeds and the other design features under investigation turn users’ attention into a commercial resource. Continuously supplying new content encourages compulsive behaviour and reduces users’ ability to exercise self-control, including among adults.

Technology companies should be free to make products engaging, useful and enjoyable. But there is an important difference between designing something people want to use and deploying something that systematically weakens their ability to stop or exercise meaningful user choice.

Why disengagement matters

Willingness to open an app does not absolve a company if the app has deliberately been engineered to make disengagement difficult.

The appropriate test is not the company’s intent but whether it has reason to know a design substantially impairs users’ capacity to disengage, in circumstances where continuous optimisation of the user’s attention produces revenue.

The Australian Consumer Law case

The case will rely on Meta’s alleged breaches of the Australian Consumer Law in relation to Facebook and Instagram.

The fight back has started

Peter Carter, whose firm is investigating this class action, has called on the federal government to go further than its proposed social media crackdown. Algorithm opt-outs, he says, are only the start of what is needed.

“While every parent wants to achieve a reduction in children’s excessive screentime, the companies have been optimising systems designed to defeat that effort,” Carter says. Infinite scroll, autoplay, push notifications, personalised recommendations, streaks and reward loops turn a young person’s attention into a commercial resource.

Continuously supplying new content encourages compulsive behaviour and reduces users’ ability to exercise self-control, even in adults, says Carter. Willingness to open an app should not absolve a company of the harm it causes if the app has deliberately been engineered to make disengagement difficult.

On his account, sensible regulation would require platforms to provide genuine stopping points and easy chronological-feed options, transparent controls over recommendations and notifications, and prominent tools that let people set limits the platform cannot immediately undermine.

The wider class-action context

On 26 August 2026, Meta agreed to a US$17 billion settlement of claims brought by 51 US state attorneys general. The states alleged that Facebook and Instagram were designed to be addictive to children, that Meta knew the risks and concealed them, and that it breached state consumer protection laws. Meta denied the allegations but agreed to settle.

• Thousands of other individual youth-harm cases moving through American courts seek compensation for harm already caused.
• Those cases also seek injunctions to compel changes to Big Tech business models.
• The Australian investigation will consider what remedies may be available under Australian law.