National PTA breaks ties with Meta amid child-safety trials

The National Parent Teacher Association is splitting with Meta as the social media giant’s high-profile child-safety court cases unfold.

Yvonne Johnson, the president of the influential education-focused nonprofit, said in a letter to members obtained by CNBC on Friday that the organization will not “pursue renewal funding from Meta to support PTA Connected for 2026,” referring to an initiative intended to help educate parents, children and teachers about digital safety tools and resources.

“As you may have seen, there has been heightened public scrutiny and legal cases involving companies including Meta regarding digital safety that have created new challenges, challenges that have proved both time-consuming and difficult for National PTA,” Johnson wrote in the February letter.

Johnson didn’t disclose how much funding the National PTA received from Meta.

The social media giant is facing trials in both California and New Mexico that accuse Meta of misleading the public about the safety of apps like Instagram.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified this week in Los Angeles Superior Court in a trial involving a plaintiff dubbed KGM, who alleges that she became addicted to apps like Instagram and YouTube due to certain design features, thus suffering great mental anguish.

Meta is also involved in a separate, ongoing trial in New Mexico where the state’s attorney general has alleged that Meta failed to safeguard its apps from online predators.

The company has denied the allegations in both of those cases.

Meta declined to comment. CNBC has reached out to the National PTA for any additional comment.

The National PTA and Meta “have had a funding relationship since 2017,” Johnson wrote, saying that the previous agreement ended on Dec. 31, 2025.

Sharon Winkler, a founding member of child-safety advocacy coalition Parents for Safe Online Spaces, or ParentsSOS, said in a statement that Zuckerberg’s testimony showed that the National PTA “made the right choice to end its partnership.”

“For years, his company has deliberately addicted children to its social media products,” Winkler said. “As a result of Zuckerberg’s greed and relentless pursuit of market share, countless children have been harmed, and families like ours have been destroyed.”

ParentsSOS said it also urged the National PTA to “end its other Big Tech partnerships, including Discord, Google, and TikTok,” due to child safety and well-being concerns.

Those tech companies, and others, are also involved in multiple lawsuits around the country over similar allegations related to the design and features of their respective services that plaintiffs claim pose serious harms to the mental health of young users and compromise their safety.

The split comes a few months after the tech…