European courts are waking up to the problem.
It started in the US, obviously. A wave of lawsuits is now crashing across Europe as nations decide whether to ban social media for kids under 16.
Civil suits are piling up in France and Italy. Families say algorithms kill. They say algorithms make teens self-harm. Meanwhile, Germany and the Netherlands are attacking the design itself. The addictive hooks. The manipulation. It is a coordinated legal front, even if it looks messy.
Last week in California, a judge said no. Meta and Google wanted a new trial in an addiction case. The court denied it. A jury already ordered both companies to pay $6 million (€5.57m) to a former young user.
Why?
Negligence. They didn’t warn young users enough. The damage from extreme use was obvious. The companies knew or should have known.
Platforms failed to warn users about the risks.
We look at the rest of the continent now.
Italy: The First Crack
Milan hosted the first real test earlier this year.
A rights group took TikTok and Meta to court. It is the first class-action lawsuit of its kind in Italy.
They want two things.
Stronger age verification for kids under 14. That is number one.
Number two: transparency. Show how the algorithms work. Strip out the manipulative parts.
The goal is simple. Protect 3.5 million children in Italy. Ages 7 to 14. All using the platforms illegally.
Meta and TikTok pushed back hard in May. They argued Italian courts have no right to judge this case. Jurisdiction challenges are the first move for these companies always.
MOIGE, the legal firm for the families, said otherwise. They claimed Meta and TikTok “attempted to downplay” scientific evidence. The families say the tech giants already know their products hurt children.
Meta issued a standard response. “We are consistently making changes to protect teens,” a spokesperson told Euronews Next. They “strongly disagree” with the allegations. The suit ignores their “longstanding commitment” to youth support, they added.
They point to Teen Accounts. Default protections. Limits on who can message you. Limits on what you see. Time spent online is capped too.
“We stand by our record.”
TikTok did not reply immediately to Euronews Next’s requests.
The clock is ticking. The next hearing is June 30. The final date? November 19. Lawyers picked it deliberately. That day is right before International Children’s Rights Day. A small jab? Probably.
France: Tragedy Turns Criminal
France is darker.
In 2024, the group Algos Victima sued TikTok. Two teenagers committed suicide after being exposed to harmful content on the app.
The lawsuit says the algorithm fed them self-harm. Eating disorders. Suicide notes. It served poison directly to their feeds.
Then prosecutors moved in.
In November 2025—a date in the source text, oddly future-dated relative to the article’s implied present but treated as fact here—French prosecutors opened a criminal investigation.
Not civil. Criminal.
They are investigating if TikTok’s algorithms exposed minors to suicide content. Did the company endanger vulnerable users? The government suggests offenses like promoting suicide-related material. Also, unlawful data collection.
Algos Victima grew angry and bigger. In May, they expanded the suit. Added abuse of vulnerability. Now 16 families are involved.
Five lost their daughters to suicide.
The others? Severe eating disorders. Depression. Suicidal thoughts. All tied to content on the screen.
No public trial date as of June 2026. Just silence from the court system so far.
The UK: Predators and Profit
The UK joined the fight too.
Murray Dowey was a Scottish teenager. He died by suicide in December 20 his family says he was tricked into sending intimate photos to someone on Instagram.
They joined a lawsuit in Delaware. Wrongful death. The Social Media Victims Centre filed the complaint.
It was a “foreseeable consequence,” they argued. Deliberate design decisions by Meta.
Since 2019? Yes. 2019 is when the complaint claims Meta knew about the feature allowing adult strangers to find children. Exposing kids to predators is a known bug they didn’t fix.
Researchers suggested making teen accounts private by default.
Meta said no.
That choice prevented approximately 5.4 million unwanted direct messages? Or perhaps allowed them. The text implies the privacy feature would have blocked them, but Meta rejected it. The center alleges this decision kept the floodgates open for abuse.
Is it just bad luck? Or is it business model?
The lawsuits are piling up. Europe is watching. The algorithms don’t stop just because a judge gets involved.
They keep rolling.
