March 26 \u2013 A Los Angeles jury has handed down an unprecedented win for a young woman who sued Meta and YouTube over her childhood addiction to social media.<\/p>\n
Jurors found that Meta, which owns Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp, and Google, owner of YouTube, intentionally built addictive social media platforms that harmed the 20-year old\u2019s mental health.<\/p>\n
The woman, known as Kaley, was awarded $6m (\u00a34.5m) in damages, a result likely to have implications for hundreds of similar cases now winding their way through US courts.<\/p>\n
Meta and Google said separately that they disagreed with the verdict and would both appeal. Meta said: \u201cTeen mental health is profoundly complex and cannot be linked to a single app.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe will continue to defend ourselves vigorously as every case is different, and we remain confident in our record of protecting teens online.\u201d<\/p>\n
A spokesperson for Google said: \u201cThis case misunderstands YouTube, which is a responsibly built streaming platform, not a social media site.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jurors found that Kaley should receive $3m in compensatory damages and an additional $3m punitive damages, because they determined Meta and Google \u201cacted with malice, oppression, or fraud\u201d in the way the companies operated their platforms.<\/p>\n
Meta will be expected to shoulder 70% of Kaley\u2019s damages award, with Google the remaining 30%.<\/p>\n
Parents of other children, who are not part of Kaley\u2019s lawsuit but claim they also were harmed by social media, were outside the courthouse on Wednesday, as they had been many days throughout the five-week trial.<\/p>\n
When the verdict came through, parents like Amy Neville were seen celebrating, and hugging other parents and supporters who had been waiting for a decision.<\/p>\n
The LA verdict came a day after a jury in New Mexico\u00a0found Meta liable for the way in which its platforms endangered children<\/a>\u00a0and exposed them to sexually explicit material and contact with sexual predators.<\/p>\n Mike Proulx, a research director for Forrester, said the back-to-back verdicts underline a \u201cbreaking point\u201d between social media companies and the public.<\/p>\n In recent months, countries such as Australia have\u00a0imposed restrictions<\/a>\u00a0for children to stop or limit their use of social media. The UK is currently running a\u00a0pilot program<\/a>\u00a0to see how a ban of social media for people aged under 16 may work.<\/p>\n \u201cNegative sentiment toward social media has been building for years, and now it\u2019s finally boiled over,\u201d Proulx said.<\/p>\n Parents and family members of victims were at the court in LA to hear the verdict<\/p>\n During his\u00a0appearance before the jury<\/a>in February, Mark Zuckerberg, Meta\u2019s chairman and chief executive, relied on his company\u2019s longstanding policy of not allowing users under the age of 13 on any of its platforms.<\/p>\n When presented with internal research and documents showing that Meta knew young children were, in fact, using its platforms, Zuckerberg said he \u201calways wished\u201d for faster progress to identify users under 13. He insisted the company had reached the \u201cright place over time\u201d.<\/p>\n While Google, as the owner of video-sharing site YouTube, was also a defendant in the case, most of the trial proceedings focused on Instagram and Meta.<\/p>\n Snap and TikTok were also initially defendants, but both companies reached undisclosed settlements with Kaley prior to trial.<\/p>\n As for Kaley\u2019s lawyers, they argued that\u00a0Meta and YouTube had built \u201caddiction machines\u201d<\/a>\u00a0and failed in their responsibility to prevent children from accessing their platforms.<\/p>\n