A Los Angeles jury has found Meta and YouTube liable for deliberately designing addictive products that harmed a young user, in the first trial of its kind concerning social media’s impact on young people. The jury awarded the plaintiff, identified as KGM, $6m in damages, with Meta ordered to pay 70% and YouTube the remainder.
The verdict, reached after nearly nine days of deliberations, found both companies negligent and said they failed to provide adequate warnings about the potential dangers of their products. KGM, now 20, testified that she became addicted to YouTube at age six and Instagram at nine, leading to depression, self-harm, and diagnoses of body dysmorphic disorder and social phobia by her early teens.
During closing arguments, KGM’s lawyer, Mark Lanier, compared the platforms to “Trojan horses” and said features such as infinite scrolling and video autoplay were engineered to keep children engaged. The plaintiffs’ case mirrored arguments made against the tobacco industry in the 1990s, focusing on the addictive qualities of the products and companies’ knowledge of their harms.
Meta said it respectfully disagrees with the verdict and plans to appeal, while a YouTube spokesperson, José Castañeda, said the service is “a responsibly built streaming platform, not a social media site” and also intends to appeal. The ruling comes a day after Meta was ordered to pay $375m in civil penalties in a separate New Mexico case over child safety, with both companies denying wrongdoing throughout.
