Insurers face growing exposure to social media harm claims

Social media addiction is gaining widespread attention and with legal claims underway in the US and countries such as Australia implementing age-related bans, the responsibility of social media giants – and therefore their insurance coverage – is under growing scrutiny.

This was the consensus of a panel of experts speaking on law firm Clyde and Co’s webinar on 3 March 2026, entitled Navigating the insurance impact of Social Media Addiction.

Guest speaker Professor Mark Griffiths, chartered psychologist and director of the international gaming research unit at Nottingham Trent University, provided some context for the problem.

He explained that “situational characteristics” within apps such as advertising and marketing – and “structural characteristics” such as algorithms, endless doomscrolling and like buttons – can influence addiction for “vulnerable, susceptible users”.

It is these structural characteristics that are causing firms particular backlash. Rosehana Amin, partner at Clyde and Co, highlighted coverage issues firms are already dealing with in the US, having been subject to allegations of harm, personal injury and public nuisance.

Such public nuisance allegations may be particularly high risk for firms, with TikTok, Snapchat, Meta and Google already involved in claims from counties and school districts that they have allegedly designed their platforms to be addictive to children.

Ongoing disputes

Some insurers have been proactively trying to reduce the exposure of their liability policies, such as Hartford Casualty Insurance beginning legal proceedings in Delaware against Meta to argue social media harms do not fall within their “personal and advertising injury” wordings.

The dispute is ongoing and insurers remain exposed, including through similar routes such as their cover of video game developers.

Griffiths, however, warned that it is important not to overstate extent of the issue, saying: “We should never mistake excessive use for addictive use. I’ve come across lots of excessive social media users, but there’s little or no negative, detrimental effects to their life.

“How do I distinguish between healthy enthusiasm and addiction? It’s very simple, healthy enthusiasm adds to life and addictions take away from it. On that very simple rule of thumb, very few people would be genuinely addicted to social media.”