Jury finds Instagram, YouTube liable in landmark social media addiction trial

A ju­ry found both Meta and YouTube li­able in a first-of-its-kind law­suit that aimed to hold so­cial me­dia plat­forms re­spon­si­ble for harm to chil­dren us­ing their ser­vices, award­ing the plain­tiff $3 mil­lion in dam­ages.

Af­ter more than 40 hours of de­lib­er­a­tion across nine days, Cal­i­for­nia ju­rors de­cid­ed Meta and YouTube were neg­li­gent in the de­sign or op­er­a­tion of their plat­forms. The ju­ry al­so de­cid­ed each com­pa­ny’s neg­li­gence was a sub­stan­tial fac­tor in caus­ing harm to the plain­tiff, a 20-year-old woman who says her use of so­cial me­dia as a child ad­dict­ed her to the tech­nol­o­gy and ex­ac­er­bat­ed her men­tal health strug­gles.

The mul­ti­mil­lion-dol­lar ver­dict will grow, as the ju­ry de­cid­ed the com­pa­nies act­ed with mal­ice, or high­ly egre­gious con­duct, mean­ing they will hear new ev­i­dence short­ly and head back in­to the de­lib­er­a­tion room to de­cide on puni­tive dam­ages.

Meta and Google-owned YouTube were the two re­main­ing de­fen­dants in the case af­ter Tik­Tok and Snap each set­tled be­fore the tri­al be­gan.

“We re­spect­ful­ly dis­agree with the ver­dict and are eval­u­at­ing our le­gal op­tions,” Meta said in a state­ment.

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

Ka­ley says she be­gan us­ing YouTube at age 6 and In­sta­gram at age 9 and 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 were de­signed to “hook” young users, like the “in­fi­nite” na­ture of feeds that al­lowed for an end­less sup­ply of con­tent, au­to­play fea­tures, and even no­ti­fi­ca­tions.

The ju­rors were told not to take in­to ac­count the con­tent of the posts and videos that Ka­ley saw on the plat­forms. That’s be­cause tech com­pa­nies are shield­ed from le­gal re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for con­tent post­ed on their sites thanks to Sec­tion 230 of the 1996 Com­mu­ni­ca­tions De­cen­cy Act.

Meta con­sis­tent­ly ar­gued that Ka­ley had strug­gled with her men­tal health sep­a­rate from her so­cial me­dia use, of­ten point­ing to her tur­bu­lent home life. Meta al­so said “not one of her ther­a­pists iden­ti­fied so­cial me­dia as the cause” of her men­tal health is­sues in a state­ment fol­low­ing clos­ing ar­gu­ments. 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 less on Ka­ley’s med­ical records and men­tal health his­to­ry and more on her use of YouTube and the na­ture of the plat­form. They ar­gued that YouTube is not a form of so­cial me­dia, but rather a video plat­form akin to tele­vi­sion, and point­ed to her de­clin­ing YouTube use as she got old­er. 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, is the plat­form’s sec­tion of short-form, ver­ti­cal videos that have the “in­fi­nite scroll” fea­ture the plain­tiffs ar­gued was ad­dic­tive.

Lawyers rep­re­sent­ing both plat­forms al­so con­sis­tent­ly point­ed to the safe­ty fea­tures and guardrails they each have avail­able for peo­ple to mon­i­tor and cus­tomize their use.

The case, along with sev­er­al oth­ers, has been ran­dom­ly se­lect­ed as a bell­wether tri­al, mean­ing its out­come could im­pact how thou­sands of sim­i­lar law­suits filed against so­cial me­dia com­pa­nies play out.

Lau­ra Mar­quez-Gar­rett, an at­tor­ney with the So­cial Me­dia Vic­tims Law Cen­ter and the coun­sel of record for Ka­ley, said this tri­al was “a ve­hi­cle, not an out­come” dur­ing de­lib­er­a­tions.

“This case is his­toric no mat­ter what hap­pens be­cause it was the first,” Mar­quez-Gar­rett said, em­pha­siz­ing the grav­i­ty of get­ting Meta and Google’s in­ter­nal doc­u­ments in­to the pub­lic record.

Mar­quez-Gar­rett said so­cial me­dia com­pa­nies are “not tak­ing the can­cer­ous tal­cum pow­der off the shelves,” like­ly in ref­er­ence to a past case that Lanier and his firm worked on, se­cur­ing a mul­ti-bil­lion-dol­lar ver­dict. “And they’re not go­ing to be­cause they’re mak­ing too much mon­ey killing kids.”

Still, the So­cial Me­dia Vic­tims Law Cen­ter and the par­ents who trace their chil­dren’s deaths or harms back to so­cial me­dia will con­tin­ue to keep fight­ing, Mar­quez-Gar­rett said, wear­ing sev­er­al rub­ber wrist­bands in hon­or of vic­tims that have not come off since the tri­al be­gan.

The tri­al was one of sev­er­al that so­cial me­dia com­pa­nies face this year and be­yond. They are the cul­mi­na­tion of years of scruti­ny of the plat­forms over child safe­ty, and whether the com­pa­nies make them ad­dic­tive and serve up con­tent that leads to de­pres­sion, eat­ing dis­or­ders or sui­cide.

Some ex­perts see the reck­on­ing as rem­i­nis­cent of cas­es against to­bac­co and opi­oid mar­kets, and the plain­tiffs hope that so­cial me­dia plat­forms will see sim­i­lar out­comes as cig­a­rette mak­ers and drug com­pa­nies, phar­ma­cies and dis­trib­u­tors.

By KAIT­LYN HUA­MANI and BAR­BARA OR­TU­TAY