Meta, social media stocks continue slide Friday amid fallout from lawsuit losses

Meta (META) stock fell more than 4% on Friday, as Wall Street continued to grapple with the company’s loss in a landmark social media lawsuit on Wednesday.

A Los Angeles jury found Meta and YouTube parent Google (GOOG, GOOGL) negligent in protecting young users on their platforms. That sent shares of the companies tumbliing Thursday, with declining as much as 8% on the day.

The suit, which revolved around whether the companies designed their apps to keep young users hooked and if they knew doing so was dangerous — is seen as a potential bellwether for a raft of similar suits that schools, states, and parents have filed against the firms.

Shares of other social media platforms like Reddit (RDDT) and Snap (SNAP) were also trading lower on Friday in response to the ruling, falling more than 5% and 3%, respectively.

Shares of Google’s parent company, Alphabet, were down closer to 2%.

In a statement following the verdict, a Meta spokesperson told Yahoo Finance, “We respectfully disagree with the verdict and will appeal. Teen mental health is profoundly complex and cannot be linked to a single app. We will continue to defend ourselves vigorously as every case is different, and we remain confident in our record of protecting teens online.”

Google spokesperson José Castañeda said in a statement, “We disagree with the verdict and plan to appeal. This case misunderstands YouTube, which is a responsibly built streaming platform, not a social media site.”

The Los Angeles case follows a separate verdict in New Mexico’s own lawsuit against Meta in which the state accused the company of misleading its users about the safety of its products and endangering children.