(The Center Square) – Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford’s trial against social media site Snapchat, which alleges harmful design for children, has been allowed to continue after the Nevada Supreme Court denied an appeal.
Snapchat had previously attempted to dismiss the case, but the Nevada Supreme Court ruled the lawsuit could continue. Across the country, Snapchat and other social media companies are in courts over similar issues of alleged harmful practice and its impacts on young people.
“I don’t think social media is inherently dangerous – it can be,” said Benjamin Morse, a social media professor at University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
“But so can just about anything,” Morse told The Center Square.
Nevada’s lawsuit against Snapchat’s parent company Snap Inc. was lodged in January 2024. In March 2025, Snap asked the Nevada Supreme Court to dismiss the suit. Snap’s main argument was its decisions were outside of Nevada’s jurisdiction, as the international company did not specifically target Nevada users.
On Monday, the Nevada Supreme Court denied Snap’s request to dismiss the case, agreeing with Nevada that Snap’s operations impacted state residents and could be reviewed by state courts. The state is asking for financial compensation for victims of Snap’s alleged deceptive trade practices, including up to $25,000 per violation against a minor.
“Today’s decision sends a clear message: Tech companies cannot evade accountability when Nevada’s children are harmed,” Attorney General Ford said in a news release. “We look forward to holding Snapchat accountable before a Nevada judge and jury and will continue pursuing this litigation to ensure social media platforms prioritize the safety and well-being of young users over engagement-driven design features.”
The state is also asking for Snap to be forced to end certain features on its platform. This includes “endless scroll” and “interaction streaks.” Endless scroll, which the suit said is a feature across social media sites, is where “A user is continuously fed more pieces of content, with no endpoint, as they scroll down a feed or page.” The suit alleged the feature is purposefully addictive for users.
Interaction streaks encourage use of the site by displaying how many consecutive days users have sent Snaps, or photos, to each other. “Streaks are design features that pressure users to continue an ongoing series of interactions with the service or another user,” as per the Nevada lawsuit.
According to the company, Snapchat has 946 million monthly users across the world.
The Office of the Nevada Attorney General denied an interview request by The Center Square on the lawsuit, while Snap did not respond to a request for comment.
“We cannot expect them [social media companies] to do the work. There’s no reason for them to make their platforms less addictive,” said Morse. “If they make their platforms less addictive. They’re losing money. And that’s not what they’re in the game to do.”
Earlier last week, Meta CEO and Facebook primary founder Mark Zuckerberg tried to convince a Los Angeles Superior Court jury that longer engagement on the Instagram site was not a company goal. Snap settled for an undisclosed amount before the trial over a similar issue of youth mental health in January with the state of California.
Meanwhile, the state of Nevada is filling up courts with four other major social media companies – Meta (Facebook), TikTok, YouTube and Kik – over similar consumer protection complaints. None of these other cases have been finalized yet.
“I’m a parent, so I absolutely don’t want these social media companies being unregulated and running amok,” said Morse. “Just in terms of human decency, they do have some obligation to protect kids and provide environments that are not dangerous.”
Morse argued future changes to social media would have to at least partially come from consumers themselves. He also warned that regulations, if done wrong, could threaten freedom of speech rights and create new problems. He likened the current situation for social media companies to the turning point for tobacco companies several decades ago.
“This is not something we’re going to fix next week … But it also is not something we can drag our heels on and figure out over the course of the next decade,” said Morse. “We’ve got to get moving. So I think it’s important to keep this conversation going.”
