Similar lawsuits are pending around the country

A Los Angeles jury has found YouTube and Meta liable for negligence in a landmark suit brought by a young woman who said their wildly popular platforms were addictive and dangerous to her well-being while she was growing up.

The verdict — with numerous similar suits pending around the country — could herald new legal consequences for tech titans like the Google-owned Youtube and Meta, which have long been shielded from liability for the content they host.

Silicon Valley companies have strongly pushed back on arguments of wrongdoing.

But the jury, whose verdict was delivered on Wednesday, March 25, determined that Meta and Google are to blame for harming the woman with addictive features and other operational choices that fueled her distress, according to The New York Times and NPR.

Jurors found fault with how the social media platforms were designed and operated.

Meta and YouTube must pay $3 million in compensatory damages, with Meta responsible for 70% of that cost.

The jury of seven women and five men also determined that Meta and Google should pay for punitive damages for malice or fraud. The jurors are now tasked with deciding what the companies should pay as a result of that.

Appeals are expected.

The lead plaintiff in this case is a now 20-year-old California woman known by the initials “KGM” or the name “Kaley” who sued YouTube, TikTok, Snap and Meta — owner of Instagram and Facebook — in 2023 and accused them of making their apps addictive, which she said caused significant harm to her mental health.

“By finding Meta and Google responsible, the jury has affirmed what parents, educators, and mental health professionals have been warning for years: the design of social media platforms poses a clear and present danger to America’s children, and the companies behind them must answer for the consequences,” Matthew Bergman, one of the woman’s attorneys, said in a statement.

Meta said in their own statement, however, “We respectfully disagree with the verdict and are evaluating our legal options. Teen mental health is profoundly complex and cannot be linked to a single app.”

A Google spokesman echoed that, saying, “This case misunderstands YouTube, which is a responsibly built streaming platform, not a social media.”

Snap and TikTok previously settled with KGM — whose lawsuit stated she began using YouTube when she was 6 years old and Instagram when she was 9, according to Reuters.

Her suit also argued that the platforms named in the case contributed to her psychiatric disorders.

Victoria Burke, a licensed therapist who diagnosed KGM with social phobia and body dysmorphic disorder when she was 13, in 2019, testified during the trial that she believed KGM’s social media experience was a “contributing factor” to her mental health.

Earlier in the trial, Instagram chief Adam Mosseri argued that social media is not “clinically addictive,” according to the Associated Press and the Times.

Mosseri, who has led Instagram for eight years, also suggested it was not possible to say what should be considered too much social media use, adding that determining whether usage is a problem is “a personal thing,” the BBC reported.

“It’s important to differentiate between clinical addiction and problematic use,” Mosseri said on the stand on Feb. 11. “I’m sure I’ve said that I’ve been ‘addicted’ to a Netflix show when I binged it really late one night, but I don’t think it’s the same thing as clinical addiction.”

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Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg made similar comments while testifying on Feb. 18 and insisted that the Instagram algorithm is not intentionally made to be addictive for young users, according to NBC News.

“I’m focused on building a community that is sustainable,” he said at the time. “If you do something that’s not good for people, maybe they’ll spend more time [on Instagram] short term, but if they’re not happy with it, they’re not going to use it over time. I’m not trying to maximize the amount of time people spend every month.”

Meanwhile, YouTube and Google’s attorney Luis Li argued that YouTube is not a social media company or addictive, according to the Times.

Li challenged what has become almost conventional wisdom among many modern-day internet users about how algorithms operate in drawing people onto a platform.

“It’s not trying to get in your brain and rewire it,” he said regarding YouTube’s algorithm. “It’s just asking you what you like to watch.”

In closing arguments, Li argued that “YouTube wasn’t a gateway to anything” and compared the site to “a toy that a child liked and then put down,” referring to KGM’s decisions over time, according to The Los Angeles Times.

“Substitute the words ‘YouTube’ for the word ‘methamphetamine,’ ” Li said. “Ask yourselves, with your lifetime of experience, whether anybody suffering from addiction could say, ‘Yeah, I just kind of lost interest.’ ”

Meanwhile, KGM’s lawyer Mark Lanier used an analogy comparing teens and social media use with gazelles being surrounded by a lion — noting that lions tend to target the weaker of the gazelles and not the strongest — according to PBS.

“I don’t naysay the opportunity to make money, but when you’re making money off of kids you have to do it responsibly,” he told the jury.

The suit is what is known as a “bellwether” at trial: when a novel case, claim or legal argument is tested in front of a jury to see how they are received.

KGB was one of three plaintiffs selected for such trials, according to the AP.

The verdict comes after a separate jury in New Mexico found Meta liable for violating a state consumer protection law by failing to protect child users of its apps from sexual exploitation, according to the Times and the Santa Fe New Mexican.

That jury determined Meta should pay $375 million.