A California jury has found Meta and YouTube liable in a case brought by a 20-year-old plaintiff who said the platforms' mechanics made her addicted to social media from a young age and worsened her mental health. The companies must pay her a total of $6 million.
A California jury has found Meta and YouTube liable in a case brought by a 20-year-old plaintiff who said the platforms' mechanics made her addicted to social media from a young age and worsened her mental health. The companies must pay her a total of $6 million.
In a Los Angeles court, according to The New York Times, a jury concluded that Meta and YouTube negligently designed their products for young users. The case involves an American woman, identified in court documents as KGM. She said she started using social media at the age of six and later suffered from anxiety, depression, body dysmorphia and thoughts of self-harm. Meta must pay $4.2 million in compensatory and punitive damages, and YouTube $1.8 million.
The key to the process was not the content that the user saw, but the very logic of the platforms. The plaintiff’s lawyers insisted that the endless feed, auto-playing videos and algorithmic recommendations were created to keep the child or teenager in the application as long as possible. The court also mentioned hundreds of photos that the girl published with beauty filters, trying to hide her own complexes.
Meta responded by arguing that the plaintiff’s mental state was also affected by family problems. YouTube insisted that it was not a social network in the classic sense and did not create a product as «habitual.» At the same time, most jurors agreed that it was the design of the platforms that caused the harm. It is significant that TikTok and Snap, which were also defendants, reached settlements with the plaintiff on undisclosed terms before the hearing began.
After the verdict was announced, lawyers for Meta and YouTube said they disagreed with the court’s decision and were considering appealing it. Meta said it was evaluating further legal steps, while Google, which owns YouTube, explicitly stated its intention to appeal.
This case is important not only because of the amount of compensation. It could set a precedent for thousands of similar lawsuits that have already been filed in the United States by teenagers, school districts and state attorneys general against Meta, YouTube, TikTok and Snap. Beck. The plaintiffs are trying to prove that the harm is not only caused by the posts or videos, but also by the product design of the platforms themselves. That is why this process is already being compared to early cases against tobacco companies, which also focused on the logic of creating an addictive product.
Previously, dev.ua wrote about how the European Commission published preliminary findings in the TikTok case and stated that certain mechanics of the application encourage compulsive use and can harm physical and mental health, especially children and vulnerable users.
