Social media

First class action injunction against Meta and TikTok kicks off on Thursday

The class action lawsuit aims to protect minors by banning access to children under 14, informing them about the risks and eliminating addictive mechanisms

by Camilla Colombo

9 May 2026

Vancouver, CANADA - Oct 17 2022 : TikTok and Instagram icons seen in an iPhone screen. Social networking service and short video platform concept. Koshiro - stock.adobe.com

3' min read

Translated by AI

Versione italiana

3' min read

Translated by AI

Versione italiana

The class action for injunctions against Meta, owner of Facebook and Instagram, and TikTok to protect minors in the digital world will begin on Thursday, 14 May, with the first hearing at the Court of Enterprises in Milan. This is the first initiative at European level and is promoted by Moige, the Italian parents' movement, by a group of families and by the associated law firm Ambrosio & Commodo of Turin.

The legal action, based on Article 840-sexiesdecies of the Code of Civil Procedure, consists of three claims:

compliance with the obligation toverify age and the prohibition of access to social media for minors under 14 years old;
the elimination of addictive mechanisms, such as profilation algorithms and the scrolling of content;
the obligation of clear,visible and transparent information on risks, as is the case for drug, alcohol and tobacco manufacturers.

The protection of minors

The objective of the collective injunction, a legal instrument to protect citizens introduced into Italia's legal system in 2021, is to defend minors against excessive use of social media, while informing them about the risks of abuse. As the lawyer Stefano Commodo, coordinator of the legal team, pointed out yesterday during the presentation of the initiative at the Foreign Press Room, 'we do not want to mortify the positives of social media, but to eliminate the technological and marketing aspects that make them harmful to the most fragile users, a fact that is now a matter of common knowledge in the scientific literature'.

Professor Tonino Cantelmi, director of the school of specialisation in cognitive-interpersonal psychotherapy and coordinator of a scientific opinion on the subject, also spoke in support of this position. "Meta and TikTok, through content and algorithms of continuous engagement, risk unbalancing the developing brain of children, hyper-stimulating the reward circuit. Scientific evidence indicates that we are creating more impulsive and vulnerable addicted brains, contributing to a real cognitive and emotional downturn'.

The position of Meta

On the class action, Meta, via a spokesperson, said: 'We defend our actions and will continue to work to ensure the safety of teenagers. We know that parents are concerned about the safety of their teenage children online, which is why we are constantly introducing measures to help protect them. Teen accounts offer default protections that limit who teens can contact, the content they can access and the time they spend on Facebook and Instagram".

If the Court of Milan holds TikTok and Meta responsible for the contested conduct, it will order them to cease and desist, opening the way to compensatory action against - potentially - thousands of families, given that there are estimated to be over three million children under the age of 14 registered on social networking sites.

The international context

The initiation of the class action injunction, supported byMoige and the law firm Ambrosio & Commodo of Turin, is part of a period of strong objections to social media owners. More and more countries in the world limit (or violate altogether) by law access to social media for young people - the forerunner, a few months ago, was Australia - but even in courtrooms social networks are increasingly under indictment. The sentence on 25 March of theLos Angeles Court, in the case numbered JCCP 5255, led to a unanimous verdict that may change the rules of social media use. Instagram and YouTube were, in fact, ordered to pay a total of three million dollars to a 20-year-old girl who had sued Meta and Google for anxiety, dysmorphism, and self-harm caused by endless scrolling on the two platforms she had been using since she was nine and six years old. Finally, at the end of April, the European Commission made a preliminary finding that Instagram and Facebook had violated the Digital Services Act (DSA) for failing to diligently identify, assess and mitigate the risks of under-13s accessing their services. Although Meta's terms and conditions set the minimum age for safe access at 13, the measures implemented by the company to enforce these restrictions do not appear to be effective. Therefore, the Commission considers that Instagram and Facebook need to change theirrisk assessment methodology and strengthen their measures to prevent, detect and remove minors under the age of 13 from their service.