Young woman’s monumental win against Meta and YouTube just blew open the lid on their ‘addiction machines’

A Los Angeles jury just delivered a monumental win for a young woman, awarding her $6 million in damages after finding Meta and Google intentionally built addictive social media platforms that harmed her mental health, as reported by the BBC. This is a huge moment for parents and campaign groups pushing for tighter restrictions on social media, and it’s likely to send ripples through the hundreds of similar cases currently making their way through US courts.

The jury found that Meta, the company behind Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp, and Google, which owns YouTube, acted with “malice, oppression, or fraud” in how they operated their platforms. This is a pretty damning indictment, and it’s why Kaley, the 20-year-old woman who brought the lawsuit, will receive $3 million in compensatory damages and an additional $3 million in punitive damages. The verdict assigns 70% of the blame to Meta and the remaining 30% to Google.

Naturally, both Meta and Google have voiced their disagreement with the verdict and plan to appeal. Meta stated that “Teen mental health is profoundly complex and cannot be linked to a single app.” They also said they’ll “continue to defend ourselves vigorously as every case is different, and we remain confident in our record of protecting teens online.” Google, for its part, tried to distance itself, with a spokesperson claiming, “This case misunderstands YouTube, which is a responsibly built streaming platform, not a social media site.”

Many are seeing this judgment as a turning point for social media safety

Ellen Roome, who is suing TikTok after her son’s death, spoke out, calling the case an “enough was enough” moment. She asked, “How many more children are going to be harmed and potentially die from these platforms?” She truly believes, “It’s been proved it’s not safe – and social media companies need to fix it.” Parents like Amy Neville, who had been waiting outside the courthouse for days, were seen celebrating and hugging supporters when the verdict came down.

This LA verdict follows closely on the heels of another significant ruling. Just a day before, a jury in New Mexico found Meta liable for endangering children and exposing them to sexually explicit material and predators on its platforms. Mike Proulx, a research director, thinks these back-to-back verdicts signal a “breaking point” between social media companies and the public. He said, “Negative sentiment toward social media has been building for years, and now it’s finally boiled over.”

Kaley’s lawyers argued that Meta and YouTube essentially built “addiction machines” and totally failed in their responsibility to keep children off their platforms. Kaley herself testified that she started using Instagram at age nine and YouTube at six, encountering absolutely no age blocks. She said she “stopped engaging with family because I was spending all my time on social media.”

During his own testimony in February, Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s CEO, brought up his company’s policy of not allowing users under 13. However, when confronted with internal research showing that young children were indeed using his platforms, Zuckerberg said he “always wished” for faster progress in identifying underage users, insisting the company had reached the “right place over time.”