A Los Angeles jury has found Meta and Google’s YouTube negligent for designing addictive products that harmed a young user, in a landmark case that could reshape social media liability, according to The Wall Street Journal.
The jury awarded $3 million in damages and $3 million in punitive damages to a 20-year-old female plaintiff who said years of early exposure contributed to anxiety, depression and body dysmorphia.
Kaley G.M. testified that she was six years old when she started watching YouTube, and joined Instagram at age nine. On one day, she spent 16 hours on Instagram. “I wanted to be on it all the time,” she said. “If I wasn’t on it, I felt like I was going to miss out on something.”
Mark Lanier, the attorney for the plaintiff, said the punitive damages served not only to “punish a wrongdoing,” but also “to discourage similar conduct in the future. … They knew! They targeted the children.”
The case challenges long-standing protections under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act by focusing on platform design rather than user-generated content. Both companies said they plan to appeal.
The ruling comes as more than 3,000 similar lawsuits are pending in California courts against Meta, YouTube, Snapchat and TikTok, signaling growing legal scrutiny of social media’s impact on youth mental health. A separate jury in New Mexico this week also found Meta liable in a related case, awarding $375 million.