A jury found that Meta and YouTube are liable for causing addiction in children, reports PBS. More specifically, the social media platforms are being held liable for damaging the mental health of the 20-year-old plaintiff, who says early use of social media, when she was a minor, led to her addiction to technology.
The wider implication in this first-of-its-kind case is that social media platforms should be held accountable for their algorithms, which have been shown to cause addictive behavior, suicidal ideation, and more. Meta and Google-owned YouTube were the remaining defendants in the suit after TikTok and Snapchat, respectively, settled before the trial began. “Teen mental health is profoundly complex and cannot be linked to a single app,” a Meta spokesperson said in a statement. “We will continue to defend ourselves vigorously as every case is different, and we remain confident in our record of protecting teens online.”
The plaintiff testified that she began using YouTube at age 6 and Instagram at age 9, spending all day on social media as a child. TikTok and Snapchat, which were also named as defendants in K.G.M.’s lawsuit, reached settlements before the trial. They remain defendants in a series of similar lawsuits that are expected to go to trial this year.
Jurors determined that the plaintiff should be awarded three million dollars in compensatory damages and an additional three million in punitive damages because they found that Meta and Google “acted with malice, oppression, or fraud” in the way they operated their platforms. Jurors listened to about a month’s worth of arguments, testimony, and evidence, and they heard from the plaintiff, as well as Adam Mosseri and Mark Zuckerberg. YouTube’s CEO wasn’t called to testify. The plaintiff’s lawyers were tasked with proving that platforms were negligent and intentionally designed to make it easy for users to get hooked.
Ultimately, this case is the bellwether case for similar lawsuits to come, and hopefully, an awakening and more regulation. But again, parents should be more vigilant about their children’s social media use. Even when you think they’re only allowed on children’s apps, just know that it’s still not as restricted as you might think, as children dive down infinite loops of content, some may be positive, some not so much.