LOS ANGELES (AP) — Meta and YouTube must pay millions in damages to a 20-year-old woman after a jury decided the social media giant and video streamer designed their platforms to hook young users without concern for their well being.
The California jury's decision Wednesday in a first-of-its-kind lawsuit could influence the outcome of thousands of similar lawsuits accusing social media companies of deliberately causing harm.
The plaintiff, known by her initials KGM, testified at trial that she became addicted to social media as a child and that this addiction exacerbated her mental health struggles. After more than 40 hours of deliberations, a majority of jurors agreed and awarded her $3 million in damages.
Jurors later recommended an additional $3 million in punitive damages after deciding the companies acted with malice, oppression or fraud in harming children with their platforms. The judge has final say over how much damages are awarded.
It’s the second verdict against Meta this week, after a jury in New Mexico determined the company harms children’s mental health and safety, in violation of state law.
Meta, the parent of Instagram and Facebook, and Google-owned YouTube issued statements disagreeing with the verdict and vowed to explore their legal options, which include appeals.
Google spokesperson Jose Castañeda said the verdict misrepresents YouTube “which is a responsibly built streaming platform, not a social media site.” A Meta spokesperson said teen mental health is “profoundly complex and cannot be linked to a single app.”
Peter Ormerod, an associate professor of law at Villanova University, called the verdict “a momentous development" but noted it’s just "one step in a much longer saga” and that he doesn't expect to see large changes to the platforms immediately.
“I don’t think it is an unequivocal victory and I think there’s a long way to go before you see something akin to the master settlement that this is often analogized to in the tobacco and opioid litigation,” he said. To get to that kind of significant change in the platforms' operation, Ormerod said Meta and YouTube would likely have to lose their legal arguments on appeal and additional bellwether trials, or test cases, like this one would have to go against them.
Both Meta and YouTube were negligent, jury says, but Meta bears more responsibility
The jury determined that Meta and YouTube were negligent in the design or operation of their respective platforms, and that the negligence was a substantial factor in causing harm to the plaintiff.
They also determined each company knew their platforms could be dangerous when used by a minor, and agreed that they failed to adequately warn of that danger, further contributing to the plaintiff's harm.
Only nine of the 12 jurors had to agree on each claim against each defendant. Two jurors consistently disagreed with the other 10 on whether the companies should be held liable, but a majority of the jury agreed on all seven claims against each company.
The jurors also decided Meta held more responsibility for harm to KGM, or Kaley, as her lawyers called her during the trial. The jury said Meta shouldered 70% of the responsibility while YouTube bore the remaining 30%. That division was reflected in the breakdown of the $3 million in punitive damages, with the jury deciding on $2.1 million from Meta and $900,000 from YouTube.
Meta and YouTube were the two remaining defendants in the case. TikTok and Snap settled before the trial began.
One juror, who did not feel comfortable sharing her full name, said to reporters outside the courtroom that Mark Zuckerberg's testimony, and how he “changed it back and forth,” did not “sit well” with the jury.
She also said they landed on the $6 million in damages even though some jurors were advocating for a higher amount because they were concerned about giving the sole plaintiff a larger lump sum all at once. But the jury still wanted the companies to understand they felt their practices were not acceptable.
“We wanted them to feel it,” she said.
The plaintiff was on social media all day from the age of 6
Jurors listened to about a month of lawyers’ arguments, testimony and evidence, and they heard from Kaley, as well as Meta leaders Zuckerberg and Adam Mosseri. YouTube’s CEO, Neal Mohan, was not called to testify.
Kaley said she began using YouTube at age 6 and Instagram at age 9. She 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 are designed to “hook” young users, like the “infinite” nature of feeds that allowed for an endless supply of content, autoplay features, and notifications.
The jurors were told not to take into account the content of the posts and videos Kaley viewed because tech companies are shielded from legal responsibility for posted content, based on Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act.
Social media identified as substantial factor in causing harm
Meta argued that Kaley's mental health struggles were not connected to her social media use and pointed to her turbulent home life. Meta also said “not one of her therapists identified social media as the cause” of her mental health issues. 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 more on the nature of the platform, arguing that it's a video platform akin to television rather than a social media platform. The company also mentioned her declining YouTube use as she aged. 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, delivers short-form, vertical videos with the “infinite scroll” feature that plaintiffs argued was addictive.
Lawyers representing both platforms also pointed to their safety features and guardrails for users to monitor and customize their use.
The California case could influence others
The Los Angeles case was filed by a single plaintiff against Meta, YouTube, TikTok and Snap. After the latter two settled, her lawyers argued that Meta and YouTube were addictive by design, and that they especially target young users.
“The reason why this case is consequential is not the individual case, but the way that it’s a bellwether test case that might guide the resolution of other lawsuits,” said Sarah Kreps, a professor and director of Cornell University’s Tech Policy Institute.
“There are thousands pending, and hundreds in California. So the concern if you’re a social media platform is, as this case goes, so might these others," she said. "I think the reason why they would be concerned, and I’ve seen this analogy with the tobacco lawsuits, is that once you have this type of verdict in one case, it just opens the floodgates for so many more.”
