Social Justice

Caroline Koziol says Instagram and TikTok ruined her life. Now she's one of hundreds of plaintiffs fighting back

- By Charlotte Alter

AS A FRESHMAN IN HIGH SCHOOL, CAROLINE KOZIOL competed in the Connecticut statewide championship, swimming the 100-yd. butterfly in just over a minute. By senior year, she could barely climb the stairs without seeing black spots. In September 2021, Koziol's coach had to pull her out of the pool after she nearly passed out during swim practice.

"My coach was like, 'Just eat a granola bar. You'll feel better," says Koziol, now a college junior. "And I was like, 'That's absolutely not going to happen."" Back then, Koziol was deep in the grips of an eating disorder that shattered her adolescence. Now, she's suing the social media giants Meta and TikTok, alleging that the design of their products contributed to her anorexia and made it more difficult for her to recover.

When Koziol was stuck at home during the COVID19 pandemic, she started looking up at-home workouts on social media to keep herself in shape for swimming, and searched for healthy recipes to make with her mom. Within weeks, her Instagram and TikTok feeds were full of content promoting extreme workouts and disordered eating. "One innocent search turned into this avalanche," she says, sipping iced coffee at a shop near her parents' home in Hartford. "It just began to overtake every thought that I had."

KOZIOL, NOW 21, is among more than 1,800 plaintiffs suing the companies behind several leading social media platforms as part of a case that could reshape their role in American society. The plaintiffs include young adults recovering from mental-health problems, the parents of suicide victims, school districts dealing with phone addiction, local governments, and 29 state attorneys general. They've joined together as part of a multidistrict litigation (MDL), a type of lawsuit which consolidates similar complaints around the country into one case to streamline pretrial proceedings, which is now moving through federal court in the Northern District of California.