In October of 2023, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel announced she was joining a massive lawsuit against Meta, the social media company that owns Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp.
Michigan was among 33 states that jointly filed the federal lawsuit in California’s Northern District Court. The states alleged the social media giant violated consumer protection laws, and the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act by designing its products to engage young users, despite knowing that social media was harmful to them.
“Meta has, for some time, been aware of the dangers that ongoing and constant exposure to social media has on young people,” Nessel said in a press release announcing her office’s involvement in the lawsuit.
This week, nearly three years later, the first trial of the potential landmark case is finally scheduled to begin.
But Michigan is no longer involved in the case. Nessel’s office quietly dropped out of the lawsuit in 2025.
Still, others in Michigan are pursuing justice against social media companies. All told, thousands of cases are pending in the courts. The aim is not just to force the companies to pay for alleged harm to its users, but to force changes in how social media apps work.
The product liability angle
About four years ago, Matthew Bergman heard about a whistleblower at Meta, who leaked internal documents to the Wall Street Journal showing that the company knew how harmful Instagram was for young users, particularly girls. Bergman is an attorney with experience representing people exposed to asbestos.
“I saw in the social media phenomenon, a very similar paradigm,” said Bergman, “a ubiquitous product, a public harm, a public health emergency, direct causation and corporate malfeasance.”
He started a firm called the Social Media Victims Law Center, which is now representing more than 1,000 people in lawsuits against social media companies.
One of those people is John DeMay, who lives in Marquette.
When it came time for his son Jordan to get a phone, DeMay was not passive.
“I did everything you could possibly imagine to keep him off of social media but allow him to have the phone and access to other people,” DeMay said.
He set screen limits. He read text messages. He bought a separate router that automatically turned off the internet at night.
But as he got older, Jordan DeMay made his way onto social media.
On Instagram one night, a cyber crime group based in Nigeria targeted 17-year-old Jordan in a sextortion scheme. Panicked, Jordan took his own life.
Two of the perpetrators pleaded guilty in federal court.
But that didn’t end the story for John.
He learned about the whistleblower, Frances Haugen, who released internal documents showing that Meta knew some of the features of its apps, its algorithm, the infinite scroll — could be harmful, to teenagers specifically. He learned of the documents showing that Meta knew criminals around the world were using its apps to recruit, and to carry out their crimes.
“They design their products to engage users,” DeMay said. “They want to get more users — younger and younger — on their platforms for longer amounts of time.”
DeMay is now among the people suing Meta.
Multiple tracks
These individual lawsuits, which Bergman is helping to shepherd through courts, are actually just one part of the mass of lawsuits against social media companies. That includes lawsuits filed by school districts. About two dozen Michigan school districts have joined, including Ann Arbor Public Schools. Oakland and Monroe counties have also joined.
And there’s the lawsuit filed by attorneys general in 2023. In this lawsuit, states claimed the company’s apps addicted kids and illegally gathered information on them.
Meta denied the allegations and countered by asking for documents from each state.
But when the deadline came to turn over the documents, the Michigan attorney general’s office said it was instead withdrawing from the lawsuit.
In a statement, a spokesperson for the AG’s office said the document requests “imposed overly burdensome litigation costs.”
“The Court approved most of Meta’s voluminous discovery demands upon the States and their agencies (such as MDHHS), demands with which the State of Michigan could not possibly comply, and especially so within the very short timeframe so ordered by the Court,” wrote Danny Wimmer, a spokesperson for Nessel’s office.
In a filing with the court, the attorney general’s office estimated that, even with a narrowed list, Meta’s request would involve producing about 700,000 documents from the state.
Michigan officially dropped out of the lawsuit in a filing in January, 2025. Three other states — Georgia, Missouri and North Dakota — dropped out as well. The remaining 29 states in the lawsuit then amended their initial complaint against the company, narrowing their arguments.
“I can’t speak to what led to the decisions of the Michigan attorney general, and I would not second guess that,” said Mathew Bergman of the Social Media Victims Law Center. “But the movement … continues undaunted.”
“You wouldn’t for example, be able to tell The New York Times ... 'please stop putting, you know, global news events on the front page."Paul Taske, director of the NetChoice Litigation Center
Meta did not respond to a request for comment. But the company is a member of an organization called NetChoice.
Paul Taske directs the NetChoice litigation center. He argues that posts on social media count as speech. And he thinks neither courts, nor lawmakers should be allowed to regulate how social media companies present posts to users.
“You wouldn’t for example, be able to tell The New York Times, ‘Oh, hey you have stories on there that we think would be, you know, distressing to a 15-year-old, and so please stop putting, you know, global news events on the front page, please put those somewhere in the middle, and lead with cartoons, or arts and leisure,” Taske said.
This is the argument social media companies have been using for years to avoid regulation on their algorithms. But attorneys like Matthew Bergman say those arguments are starting to crumble in court.
Already two lawsuits, one in federal court, and one in state court in New Mexico, have found Meta liable for harms to users. Taske said he believes appeals could overturn those decisions.
And while Michigan, as a state, may not be involved in the lawsuit starting now in California, the result could still impact people here.
If any of the lawsuits force Meta or other social media companies to change how they design their apps, those changes will likely be rolled out everywhere.
“I am confident that we will prevail,” said Bergman.
