Meta and YouTube ordered to pay $3 million to young woman in social media addiction trial
After nine days of deliberation, a Los Angeles jury found Google and Meta liable for harms stemming from the design of their social media products on Wednesday and ordered them to pay $3 million in damages to a plaintiff who said that Instagram and YouTube caused depression, body dysmorphia and suicidal thoughts.
Meta was ordered to pay 70 percent of damages and YouTube is responsible for 30 percent.
This is the first trial tackling the legal question of whether features of social media, like autoplay, infinite scroll and beauty filters can cause harm to users.
The plaintiff, KGM, filed her lawsuit using a pseudonym in 2023. KGM, now 20, says she has been addicted to social media since she was a child. It was one of three cases selected out of thousands as “bellwether trials” to test out a new theory of liability.
The outcome of the trial doesn’t preclude any other of the thousands from suing a seeking damages, as determining causation varies greatly case to case. “Each individual plaintiff still does have to show, if they go to trial, that any negative mental health outcomes they personally experienced were linked to social media,” said Maddy Batt, a legal fellow at Tech Justice Project, a law firm specializing in suits against AI chatbots. “It’s not like an automatic legal win for everyone in the future.”
It is a huge boon to tech accountability advocates to see this success though, Batt said, and could lead to tech companies changing their products because of the amount of money in play to settle cases or pay damages.
Batt pointed out that this trial is the first time tech leaders like Mark Zuckerberg have had to make a case and submit to questioning in front of a jury of their peers. Large tech companies have faced a public backlash over the past decade, and much of it has revolved around their products’ impact on the mental health of young people.
Frances Haugen, a whistleblower, leaked internal research documents from the company previously known as Facebook showing employees were aware girls reported their eating disorders worsening after using Instagram. Social media use can prompt girls to compare and criticize their own bodies, and many companies struggle to moderate influencers promoting eating disorders on their platforms.
Over two-thirds of teenage girls reported using Instagram, more than boys. A quarter each of Black and Latinx teens said they use Instagram and YouTube “constantly” according to a 2024 survey by Pew Research Center.
Google argued that YouTube was not social media, while Meta pressed on the question of whether social media was the cause of KGM’s anxiety, depression and body dysmorphia. Meta’s lawyers deconstructed KGM’s home environment, alleging her parents’ divorce and treatment by her mother were the root cause of her emotional pain. The companies also argued that it wasn’t the way their products were designed that caused problems, but rather the specific content seen.
The burden was on KGM’s lawyers to prove that Meta and Google were negligent in their design of social media products and show that those same products caused the plaintiff’s mental health issues. The jury agreed with those arguments.
KGM testified that features like notifications made the app addictive, and she was unable to stop whenever she tried to limit her usage. She said KGM started her first Instagram account at age 9 and joined YouTube at age 10, even though legally kids aren’t supposed to have online accounts before they’re 13. Almost all of her Instagram posts had image filters on them, and KGM said she didn’t feel bad about her body until she began using the platform.
Social media companies have been battling allegations of harm, particularly to kids, for years. Most of the claims are easily dismissed under Section 230, the law that says a platform isn’t held liable for third-party content it hosts. But these bellwether cases are testing whether the design of products like YouTube, Facebook and Instagram are inherently harmful. Plaintiffs have pointed to the impacts of features such as infinite scroll and face filters as harmful regardless of the content being shared.
KGM originally named the companies behind Snapchat and Tiktok in the lawsuit, but those parties settled for an undisclosed sum before the trial started. The trial focused on Instagram and Facebook, both Meta products, and YouTube, which is owned by Google.
The case concludes as Congress works to pass a package of internet bills that is aimed at protecting kids online but that critics say may lead to the removal of digital LGBTQ+ and abortion content.
