A Los Angeles jury has delivered what is being described as a watershed moment in the legal accountability of Silicon Valley, finding Meta and YouTube liable for deliberately designing their platforms to be addictive and causing measurable harm to a young user. After more than eight days of deliberation following a seven-week trial in Los Angeles Superior Court, jurors ordered the companies to pay a total of three million dollars in compensatory damages, with Meta bearing 70 percent of the responsibility and YouTube the remaining 30 percent. The jury subsequently ordered Meta to pay an additional 2.1 million dollars and Google an additional 900,000 dollars in punitive damages, bringing the total award to six million dollars.
The lawsuit was brought by a 20-year-old woman identified as “Kaley,” who alleged that major social media companies intentionally designed their platforms to be addictive through features like auto-scrolling, ultimately leading to anxiety, depression, and body image issues. During the trial, lawyers for the plaintiff showed the jury internal documents from Meta in which chief executive Mark Zuckerberg and other executives described the company’s efforts to attract and retain children and teenagers on its platforms. One document stated that if the company wanted to win big with teenagers, it needed to bring them in as pre-teens. Another internal memo revealed that 11-year-olds were four times as likely to return to Instagram compared to competing apps, despite the platform requiring users to be at least 13 years of age. Both Meta and YouTube denied that the plaintiff’s social media use caused her mental health difficulties, arguing that family history and other factors played a more significant role, and both companies have said they plan to appeal the verdict.
The Los Angeles case was selected by the court as a bellwether trial to help determine outcomes in similar connected litigation throughout California under Judicial Council Coordination Proceedings. Although TikTok and Snap were originally part of the case, both settled with the plaintiff before trial. A federal trial is set to begin this summer in the Northern District of California involving similar consolidated claims by school districts and parents nationwide. The litigation has drawn widespread comparisons to the legal crusade against the tobacco industry in the 1990s, which forced that industry to stop targeting minors through advertising. The verdict arrived just one day after a separate New Mexico jury ordered Meta to pay 375 million dollars after finding the company misled users about platform safety, making it a particularly bruising week for the social media giant and intensifying calls for Congress to pass more comprehensive online safety legislation.
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