Arkansas files lawsuit against Snapchat parent company

Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin on Thursday announced his office filed a lawsuit against Snap, Inc., Snapchat’s parent company, that claims the California-based company’s social media platform was deceptively designed to addict minors who used it.

The lawsuit, filed in Phillips County Circuit Court, is the second targeting social platforms announced by Griffin this week. Roblox, the online game popular with children, and Discord, a messaging platform, were sued in Los Angeles on similar allegations under the Arkansas Deceptive Trade Practices Act.

“Snap’s design choices were calculated to leverage the developmental vulnerabilities of minors,” Griffin said in a press release. “Snapchat’s designers exploited teens’ craving for social approval, their sensitivity to exclusion, and their susceptibility to impulse-driven reward systems.”

Arkansas sues Roblox and Discord, accusing platforms of putting children at risk

Snap did not respond to a request for comment by deadline. 

The premise of Snapchat revolves around disappearing photos, videos and messages sent between friends. Over the years, it expanded to include other features such as Snapchat Stories — a feature that proliferated to other platforms.

The lawsuit said the disappearing messages, combined with features such as Snapstreaks and frequent notifications to draw users in, created addictive “dopamine feedback loops” in adolescents to keep them on the app, without properly warning parents and young users of possible illicit sexual material and the sale of drugs and guns on the platform.

“Snap cannot correct its wrongdoing by editing, withdrawing, or censoring third-party content. Rather, Snap must re-design its product, include meaningful disclosures, and advertise it honestly,” the complaint states. 

Similar to the Roblox and Discord lawsuit, Griffin said Snapchat’s lack of age verification beyond self-reported age selection when creating an account enables predators to target minors for sex or extortion. The complaint also stated that Snap was failing to report child sexual abuse material. 

In addition to lawsuits by families, Arkansas’ latest social media lawsuit is one of several filed by state attorneys general across the country against Snap, Inc. under state deceptive trade practice laws, claiming the social media platform has harmed childrens’ mental health and enabled the proliferation of child sexual abuse material. It’s part of a broader backlash by states and parents against social media companies. 

The lawsuit also comes on the heels of a Los Angeles jury’s verdict in March that found Meta and Google, parent companies of Facebook and YouTube, respectively, negligently harmed the mental health of an unnamed user of their platforms by creating them to be addicting. According to the New York Times, the verdict showed a legal theory that social media could cause personal injury held water. 

Snap was originally a plaintiff in that case, but settled before trial.

Arkansas became the first state to require social media companies to verify children’s ages before signing up for accounts in 2023. A federal judge blocked the law in 2025, around the same time the Legislature approved changes to the 2023 law. Those changes were also blocked in federal court this year.