Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier filed a lawsuit this week against Snap, the operator of Snapchat, alleging the company hosts features that are addictive for young users.
The suit, filed Monday, claims Snapchat’s features for infinite scrolling, autoplay videos, push notifications and interactive metrics violate a state law signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) last year.
“Snap, Inc. has acknowledged in other litigation that it is subject to HB 3, yet is openly defying Florida law,” Uthmeier’s office said Tuesday in a release.
According to Uthmeier’s office, these tools are considered “addictive design features” under the law, H.B. 3, which was approved in March 2024 and went into effect at the start of 2025.
“The harms visited on young people by compulsive use of social media are a direct result of the intentional design choices of the owners of certain social media platforms, including Snap,” the suit stated.
The suit alleges Snap deceives parents about the safety of the app, claiming it hosts addictive features and gives access to sexual predators and drug dealers.
H.B. 3 also prohibits social media platforms with these features from allowing accounts for users aged 13 or younger and requires the platforms to get parental permission to grant accounts for users 14 or 15 years old.
“Snap continues to market Snapchat in Florida as safe for users as young as 13, even though it knows that Snapchat can be easily used to access pornography and buy drugs, among many other dangers,” the release stated.
“Snap contracts with and provides accounts to Florida users who it knows are younger than 14. It also fails to seek parental consent before contracting with and providing accounts to Florida users who it knows are 14 or 15 years old,” according to the complaint.
A Snap company spokesperson criticized the law, stating it “does not adequately address age verification and infringes” on users’ First Amendment rights. They also argued the law risks exposing users to data protection and privacy issues.
“We believe there are more privacy-conscious solutions to online safety and managing age verification, including at the operating system, app store or device level,” the spokesperson wrote in a statement to The Hill.
The law is being challenged in federal court by tech industry groups NetChoice and Computer and the Computer and Communications Industry Association, which argue the law violates the First Amendment.
“We hoped that the state would allow this challenge to proceed through the proper legal process,” the Snap spokesperson said. “Unfortunately, they’ve decided to file a complaint in state court in an attempt to bypass the issues that are already being heard in federal court.”
The legal fight comes amid a broader national debate in the industry over age verification and whether it is on the app stores or the apps themselves to confirm users’ ages.
Snapchat, along with other popular social media platforms like X and Meta, believe the onus of age verification is on the app stores.
The companies supported a bill recently signed in Utah that requires app stores to verify users’ ages and receive parental consent for minors to download applications.
Apple and Google, which host two of the market’s largest app stores, reject this argument, maintaining age verification presents risks to the privacy of minors or guardians. The two companies argue developers are a better fit to handle age verification.
