A jury in Los Angeles has found Meta and YouTube liable for deliberately designing addictive products that harmed a young user. The verdict, delivered on Wednesday, awarded the plaintiff damages of $6m, with Meta paying 70% and YouTube the remainder. The jury determined that both companies were negligent and failed to provide adequate warnings about the dangers of their platforms.
The case, the first of its kind to go to trial over social media's alleged harm to young people, centred on a 20-year-old woman identified as KGM. She testified that she became addicted to YouTube at age six and Instagram at nine, leading to depression and self-harm by age ten. Her lawyer, Mark Lanier, argued that features like infinite scroll and autoplay were engineered to maximise screen time, likening them to Trojan horses.
The jury deliberated for nearly nine days before reaching a 10-2 split decision in favour of the plaintiff on all questions. The verdict comes a day after Meta was ordered to pay $375m in civil penalties in a separate New Mexico case for misleading consumers about platform safety and enabling child sexual exploitation. These are the first rulings to hold Meta liable for how its products affect young people.
Both companies plan to appeal. A Meta spokesperson said the company disagrees with the verdict, stating that teen mental health is complex and cannot be linked to a single app. YouTube's spokesperson, José Castañeda, argued that the platform is a responsibly built streaming service, not a social media site. The companies have consistently denied wrongdoing, with Meta attributing KGM's issues to a difficult home life.
