Alphabet’s  YouTube, Snap and TikTok have settled in the first case set to be tried in a litigation that would see social media companies pay for the expenses school districts incur to battle a youth mental health crisis they claim they helped foster.

The settlements were described in court papers filed on 15th May in federal court in Oakland, California, and will settle claims made by a Kentucky school district that has yet to go to trial with Facebook and Instagram parent Meta Platforms on June 15.

Terms of ​the settlements with Breathitt County School District in rural Eastern Kentucky were not ⁠disclosed.

This is something that’s been amicably resolved, and we’re still working on creating age-appropriate products and parental controls that will fulfil the promise,” said a YouTube spokesperson in a statement.

The parent company of Snapchat, Snap, announced that it settled the case amicably. TikTok has not yet responded to a request for comment.

A little over 3,300 addiction-related lawsuits are currently pending against the social media companies in California state court. The number of cases brought by individuals, municipalities, states and school districts has been consolidated in the California federal court, with another 2,400 cases added.

In a landmark trial, ​a Los Angeles jury on March 25 found Meta and Alphabet’s Google negligent for designing social media platforms that ‌are ⁠harmful to young people. It gave a 20-year-old woman who claimed she was addicted to social media as a child a combined $6 million.

Both companies have rejected the claims, stating that they do everything they can to keep teens and young users safe on the sites.

It also asks a court to rule on the companies’ platforms, mandating that they make changes to minimise addictive elements.

Its case is a bellwether, or test case, for over a ⁠thousand ​similar school districts’ lawsuits.

Bellwether verdicts are valuable to judges and attorneys because they provide an indicator of the value of other claims that could remain alive and be included in settlement discussions. Usually, a number of bellwether cases are tried first, which leads to a wider resolution.

Breathitt is one of about 1,200 ​school districts suing the ​social media companies over ⁠claims they caused a mental health crisis among students and then saddled schools with the fallout.

The school district has been seeking over $60 million to cover ​the costs of counteracting social media’s impact on students’ mental health and ​to fund ⁠a 15-year mental health program to abate the problem.