The Lanier Law Firm Represents Arkansas Attorney General Against Snapchat Over Deliberately Engineered Predator Friendly Features

Lawsuit claims company exposes children to predators, addicts minors to its platform

HOUSTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The Lanier Law Firm is representing the State of Arkansas and Attorney General Tim Griffin in litigation against Snap Inc., alleging the Snapchat platform exposes Arkansas children to sexual predators and grooming while engineering powerful addiction in minors — all while assuring parents their children are safe.

The complaint characterizes Snap’s conduct as a deliberate business decision to maximize engagement in children at the direct expense of their safety and mental health.

“Snap built a platform designed to leave no fingerprints,” says the firm’s Mark Lanier. “Disappearing messages don’t disappear for the predator who already saved them — they disappear for the parent, the prosecutor and the jury. That’s not a privacy feature. That’s architecture designed to protect the predator, not the child.”

According to the complaint, Snapchat’s core features are deliberate choices engineered to maximize addictive engagement in minors. The complaint, one of a growing number of multistate enforcement efforts against Snapchat, alleges the Snap Map location feature allows predators to locate children by neighborhood, school and real-time position. Disappearing messages create a communications environment ideally suited to grooming, where adults can contact minors, solicit explicit content and arrange meetings — with the platform destroying the evidence as a product feature.

“Snap told parents their kids were sending photos to friends,” says the firm’s Zeke DeRose. “What they didn’t tell parents was that the same platform was broadcasting exactly where those kids were to anyone — even adult strangers — who cared to look. We intend to make sure Snap is held fully accountable for what it built and what it chose not to fix.”

The complaint further alleges that Snap conducted internal research that showed its platform was causing mental health harm, including elevated rates of depression, body dysmorphia, anxiety and suicidal ideation, particularly among teen girls. Many features were specifically engineered to exploit adolescent psychology and drive compulsive use.

“The pattern across this industry is always the same: a company runs its own research, learns its product is harming children, buries the research,” says DeRose. “Snap is not unique in doing this, but they are going to be held accountable for it in Arkansas. You cannot knowingly addict children to your platform, watch them get exploited, destroy the evidence and call it a ‘privacy’ feature.”

Earlier this year a Lanier Law Firm trial team secured a $6 million verdict covering punitive and compensatory damages against Meta Platforms Inc. and Google’s YouTube, finding both companies liable for deliberately designing addictive platforms that caused severe mental health harm to a young California woman.

The State of Arkansas is seeking injunctive relief requiring Snap to implement meaningful age verification, parental controls that cannot be overridden by children and fundamental architectural changes to its most dangerous features. The complaint also seeks civil penalties of $10,000 per knowing violation of the Arkansas Deceptive Trade Practices Act, in addition to other compensation claims.

The case is State of Arkansas v. Snap Inc., Cause No. 54CV-26-251, filed in the Arkansas Circuit Court of Phillips County.

About Lanier Law Firm

The Lanier Law Firm is an award-winning national trial firm specializing in a variety of practice areas, including asbestos exposure, pharmaceutical liability, business litigation and product liability. With talented attorneys in Houston, Fort Worth, New York, and Los Angeles, the firm has won more than $20 billion for clients since its founding in 1990.