A jury found both Meta and YouTube liable in a first-of-its-kind lawsuit that aimed to hold social media platforms responsible for harm to children using their services.
The decision came after more than 40 hours of deliberation across nine days and more than a month since jurors heard opening statements in the trial.
The plaintiff, a 20-year-old woman identified as KGM in documents, or Kaley as her lawyers have called her during the trial, says her early use of social media addicted her to the technology and exacerbated her mental health struggles.
She began using YouTube at age 6 and Instagram at age 9 and told the jury she was on social media “all day long” as a child.
Meta and Google-owned YouTube were the two remaining defendants in the case after TikTok and Snap each settled before the trial began.
Jurors listened to a month of lawyers’ arguments, testimony and evidence, and they heard from Kaley herself, as well as Meta leaders Mark Zuckerberg and Adam Mosseri. YouTube’s CEO, Neal Mohan, was not called in to testify. 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 were designed to “hook” young users, like the “infinite” nature of feeds that allowed for an endless supply of content, autoplay features, and even notifications.
Jurors were told not to take into account the content of the posts and videos that Kaley saw on the platforms. That’s because tech companies are shielded from legal responsibility for content posted on their sites thanks to Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act.
Meta argued that Kaley had struggled with her mental health separate from her social media use, often pointing to her turbulent home life. Meta also said “not one of her therapists identified social media as the cause” of her mental health issues in a statement following closing arguments. 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 less on Kaley’s medical records and mental health history and more on her use of YouTube and the nature of the platform. They argued that YouTube is not a form of social media, but rather a video platform akin to television, and pointed to her declining YouTube use as she got older. According to their data, she spent one minute a day on average watching YouTube Shorts since its inception. YouTube Shorts, which launched in 2020, is the platform’s section of short-form, vertical videos that have the “infinite scroll” feature the plaintiffs argued was addictive.
The case has been randomly selected as a bellwether trial.