LOS ANGELES, California (LifeSiteNews) — A jury has found Meta and Google liable for $6 million in damages in a landmark case that alleged the popular social media apps are designed to addict children.
The plaintiff in the high-profile case against the social media giants was a 20-year-old woman known as “Kaley” who said she became obsessed by Meta’s Instagram and Google’s YouTube apps when she was a child because the apps were purposely designed to be addictive.
She alleged that her addiction to the apps contributed to a decline in her mental health.
The companies were ordered to pay $3 million in compensatory damages and $3 million in punitive damages, with Meta responsible for 70 percent of the total and Google for 30 percent according to multiple reports.
“The era of Big Tech invincibility is over – this ruling is an earthquake that shakes Big Tech’s predatory business model to its core,” declared Sacha Haworth, executive director of the Tech Oversight Project.
“After years of gaslighting from companies like Google and Meta, new evidence and testimony have pulled back the curtain and validated the harms young people and parents have been telling the world about for years,” said Haworth.” These products were purposefully designed to harm, addict millions of young people, and lead to lifelong mental health consequences.”
Haworth continued:
This trial was proof that if you put CEOs like Mark Zuckerberg on the stand before a judge and jury of their peers, the tech industry’s wanton disregard for people will be on full display. We have the documents, we have the evidence, and now is the time for Congress to step up and finally pass the Senate’s Kids Online Safety Act, so that we can finally protect kids and save lives.
“The question really is, what caused the harm that [Kaley G.M.] says she’s suffering? Is it the content of the videos and the posts that she has seen and watched on social media platforms? Or is it defects, alleged defects in the design of the platforms themselves?” Clay Calvert, nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, said to USA Today.
In the end, the jury found that the tech titans were negligent concerning the design of Instagram and YouTube and that they had failed to warn users about the danger of addiction.
“This is a breakthrough because it validates a new theory that platform design can be a defective product,” said Kimberly Pallen, a litigation partner at the law firm Withers, told the New York Times.
“Today’s verdict is a referendum – from a jury, to an entire industry – that accountability has arrived,” the lead counsel for the plaintiff said in a statement, according to Reuters.
“U.S. law strongly protects social media companies from liability for what is on their platforms, but the plaintiff in the Los Angeles proceeding focused on platform design rather than content,” explained the Reuters report.
The apps Snap and TikTok were also included as defendants, but both settled with the plaintiff before the trial began.
“More than 2,000 plaintiffs are alleging social media companies like Meta, Snapchat, TikTok, and Alphabet knowingly designed addictive products that expose children to predators, exploitation, and self-harm,” explained a statement from the Tech Oversight Project. “The trials are considered the most significant Big Tech accountability litigation to date, drawing parallels to precedent-setting products liability cases against Big Tobacco.”
“The evidence now in the public record shows how companies knowingly engineered products with design features such as infinite scroll, push notifications, and algorithmic amplification. For Big Tech companies, youth engagement is a financial imperative,” asserted the Tech Oversight Project. “Social media platforms generate billions in annual ad revenue from U.S. youth. According to new Pew Research Center survey data, 36% of U.S. teens say they use TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat, and/or Facebook ‘almost constantly.’”
Meta plans to appeal. “Teen mental health is profoundly complex and cannot be linked to a single app. We will continue to defend ourselves vigorously as every case is different,” said company spokesman Andy Stone in a statement.
José Castañeda, a spokesman for Google, which owns YouTube, indicated they too plan to appeal: “This case misunderstands YouTube, which is a responsibly built streaming platform, not a social media site.”
