Meta, YouTube ordered to pay millions in landmark social media addiction trial

In a landmark judgment, Meta and YouTube were ordered to pay millions in damages to a 20-year-old woman after a jury decided the social media giant and video streamer designed their platforms to hook young users without concern for their well-being.

The California jury's decision Wednesday (March 25) in a first-of-its-kind lawsuit could influence the outcome of thousands of similar lawsuits accusing social media companies of deliberately causing harm.

40 hours of deliberations

The plaintiff, known by her initials KGM, testified at trial that she became addicted to social media as a child and that this addiction exacerbated her mental health struggles. After more than 40 hours of deliberations, a majority of jurors agreed and awarded her USD 3 million in damages.

Also read: Meta to acquire Moltbook, social network for AI agents

Jurors later recommended an additional USD 3 million in punitive damages after deciding the companies acted with malice, oppression or fraud in harming children with their platforms. The judge has final say over how much damages are awarded.

It's the second verdict against Meta this week, after a jury in New Mexico determined the company harms children's mental health and safety, in violation of state law.

Meta, the parent of Instagram and Facebook, and Google-owned YouTube issued statements disagreeing with the verdict and vowed to explore their legal options, which includes appeals.

Google spokesperson Jose Castañeda said the verdict misrepresents YouTube “which is a responsibly built streaming platform, not a social media site”. A Meta spokesperson said teen mental health is “profoundly complex and cannot be linked to a single app.”

Meta bears 70 pc, while YouTube shoulders 30 pc

The jury determined that Meta and YouTube knew the design or operation of their platforms was dangerous or was likely to be dangerous when used by a minor. They also agreed that the platforms failed to adequately warn of that danger, further contributing to the plaintiff's harm.

Only nine of the 12 jurors had to agree on each claim against each defendant. Two jurors consistently disagreed with the other 10 on whether the companies should be held liable.

The jurors also decided Meta held more responsibility for harm to the plaintiff, who has been identified by her initials KGM. The jury said Meta shouldered 70 per cent of the responsibility while YouTube bore the remaining 30 per cent. That division was reflected in the breakdown of the USD 3 million in punitive damages, with the jury deciding on USD 2.1 million from Meta and USD 9,00,000 from YouTube.

Meta and YouTube were the two remaining defendants in the case. TikTok and Snap settled before the trial began.

The plaintiff was on social media all day from the age of 6

Jurors listened to about a month of lawyers' arguments, testimony and evidence, and they heard from KGM, or Kaley as her lawyers called her during the trial, as well as Meta leaders Mark Zuckerberg and Adam Mosseri. YouTube's CEO, Neal Mohan, was not called to testify.

Kaley said she began using YouTube at age 6 and Instagram at age 9. She told the jury she was on social media “all day long” as a child.

Lawyers representing Kaley, led by Mark Lanier, were tasked with proving that the respective defendants' negligence was a substantial factor in causing Kaley's harm. They pointed to specific design features they said are designed to “hook” young users, like the “infinite” nature of feeds that allowed for an endless supply of content, autoplay features, and notifications.

The jurors were told not to take into account the content of the posts and videos Kaley viewed because tech companies are shielded from legal responsibility for posted content, based on Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act.

Social media identified as substantial factor in causing harm

Meta argued that Kaley's mental health struggles were not connected to her social media use and pointed to her turbulent home life. Meta also said “not one of her therapists identified social media as the cause” of her mental health issues. But the plaintiffs did not have to prove that social media caused Kaley's struggles — only that it was a “substantial factor” in causing her harm.

YouTube focused more on the nature of the platform, arguing that it's a video platform akin to television rather than a social media platform. The company also mentioned her declining YouTube use as she aged. According to their data, she spent about one minute a day on average watching YouTube Shorts since its inception. YouTube Shorts, which launched in 2020, delivers short-form, vertical videos with the “infinite scroll” feature that plaintiffs argued was addictive.

Lawyers representing both platforms also pointed to their safety features and guardrails for users to monitor and customise their use.

The California case could influence others

The Los Angeles case was filed by a single plaintiff against Meta, YouTube, TikTok and Snap. After the latter two settled, she argued that Meta and YouTube were addictive by design, and that they especially target young users.

“The reason why this case is consequential is not the individual case, but the way that it's a bellwether test case that might guide the resolution of other lawsuits,” said Sarah Kreps, a professor and director of Cornell University's Tech Policy Institute.

“So there are thousands pending, and hundreds in California. So the concern if you're a social media platform is, as this case goes, so might these others. And I think the reason why they would be concerned, and I've seen this analogy with the tobacco lawsuits, is that once you have this type of verdict in one case, it just opens the floodgates for so many more.”

How users get addicted to Instagram, YouTube

If you open your phone’s settings and actually check how many hours you spend daily on YouTube and Instagram, it will make your head spin. So we decide, “Okay, I’ll reduce this, I’ll set a time limit”. Even that won’t work. We’ll put a 1-hour limit and finish it off by 9 in the morning. Then, like an alcoholic whose hands start to shake, our fingers start itching. We increase the limit. Next step, we just delete the limit feature itself. Now, Elon Musk has introduced the same scroll-video format into X as well.

You might argue, “Reading text on social media is also like that, right?” Not really. Most people who started reading this piece wouldn’t even have reached this paragraph; they’d have jumped to a video long ago.

Once upon a time, people at home, when they were bored, would casually flip through old newspapers and weekend supplements around 11 in the morning. Now, the whole world is spinning inside Reels all the time. Sure, there is some good content there. But most of what we actually end up watching can easily be split into three buckets: endless ASMR (Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response), whole families churning out “influencer” content, and a big pile of clips that you couldn’t even neatly classify as anything meaningful.

Harari, the author of Sapiens, says something about wheat: “We did not domesticate wheat. It domesticated us.” That’s almost exactly what’s happened with Instagram and YouTube videos. We think we are using them. In reality, they are the ones using us.

(With AP inputs)