YouTube and Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, were both found liable Wednesday in a landmark lawsuit accusing the social media companies of using addictive practices that allegedly hooked children on the sites and contributed to mental health and other harms.
The jury awarded a total of $3 million in compensatory damages to the 20-year-old plaintiff, with Meta directed to pay 70% of that amount, and YouTube 30%. The panel, which found the companies acted with malice, then reconvened and heard evidence on whether either or both companies should pay punitive damages.
After a brief period of deliberations, the jury decided to award $3 million in punitive damages, with roughly the same percentage split between the two companies.
In California, punitive damages, also called exemplary damages, represent additional compensation awarded in civil lawsuits levied to punish a defendant for highly reprehensible conduct and to deter similar future acts. A judge can change the amount of punitive damages awarded by a ruling from the bench or on a motion from the affected parties.
The verdicts came at start of the jury’s ninth day of deliberations in downtown Los Angeles. The case was being closely watched as a possible bellwether of the fate of thousands of similar lawsuits that are still pending.
The lawsuit involved a plaintiff known only as K.G.M., who testified during the trial that she began using social media sites when she was as young as 6 years old.
Plaintiff’s attorney Mark Lanier argued that his young client, who had uploaded hundreds of videos before she was even a teenager, became vulnerable to the Meta and YouTube platforms. He referred to the social media companies as “behemoths,” and compared them to a lion stalking a pack of vulnerable gazelles. The advantages of the lion, Lanier told the Los Angeles Superior Court jury, is a legitimate comparison to what Meta and YouTube did to K.G.M., a Chico resident who is now 20 years old.
Referring to what he called “engineered addiction,” Lanier also equated the content of the platforms to a Trojan horse, saying users are drawn in by the content’s “wonderful and great” appearance, but find themselves taken over by the reels on their devices.
Lanier said after the initial verdict that plaintiffs’ attorneys put the net worth of both social media companies in front of the jury, in hopes they would take those figures into account when deciding on punitive damages. He said he did not ask for any specific punitive damages amount, but he noted that the value of Google — parent company of YouTube — was placed at $415 billion.
“How on earth do you ever fine that entity for what behavior we’re talking about here?” Lanier told reporters. “So I just took a jar of M&Ms that had 415 M&Ms in it. I showed it to the jury. I said, you grab a handful out. You don’t even notice they’re gone. But that’s 20, that’s $20 billion to these companies.”
Lanier said the jury’s verdict finding the companies liable was a victory for K.G.M., but also “it’s of very great importance to a generation of people who have been affected.”
“There are so many families who’ve been tragically hurt through the addiction of social media,” he said. “And while we’ve never been able to talk about the content of what these social media platforms can do — that’s protected under the judge’s rulings — we have been able to talk about the features. And we’ve sent a message with this that you will be held accountable for the features. Regardless of whether the children are getting sent pornographic pictures, regardless of whether they’re being sexploitated, regardless of those types of issues — just because of the features alone that drive addiction, these companies can be held accountable. That’s a huge message for these companies.”
TikTok and Snap were originally defendants in the lawsuit, but both reached settlements before the trial began in the courtroom of Judge Carolyn Barbara Kuhl. Hundreds of similar lawsuits are still pending, with this initial trial being closely watched by industry experts.
The social media companies strongly denied all allegations in K.G.M.’s lawsuit and maintained they are committed to the well-being of their young users. Attorneys have questioned the concept of social media being an addiction, and suggested that other factors in K.G.M’s life — including alleged verbal and physical abuse by her parents — led to her mental health struggles.
Following the verdict Wednesday, Meta issued a statement saying, “We respectfully disagree with the verdict and are evaluating our legal options.”
YouTube officials said they plan to appeal the ruling.
“This case misunderstands YouTube, which is a responsibly built streaming platform, not a social media site,” according to the company.
During his closing argument, Meta lawyer Paul Schmidt showed jurors a video which appeared to show the plaintiff’s mother yelling at her, attempting to drive home the point of family strife. YouTube lawyer Luis Li, meanwhile, pointed to K.G.M.’s own testimony during the trial, in which she said her interest in YouTube faded as she got older.
“Ask whether anybody suffering from addiction could say, `Yeah I kinda lost interest.’ What does your common sense tell you about that?” Li asked the jury.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified earlier in the trial that while pre- teens are barred from using the company’s services, some minors still break the rules to do so.
Zuckerberg told jurors that minors under age 13 are not permitted to use the Meta platforms, but there are individuals who will do so anyway. He said the company removes users who are found to be underage. K.G.M. was under the age limit when she began using the products, and Zuckerberg suggested it is up to users to read the terms.
That drew a rebuke from a plaintiff’s attorney who questioned whether Meta actually expected young children to read the rules regarding the platform’s use.
Attorneys for K.G.M. contend that despite the platform’s prohibition of preteen users, as many as 4 million such children access Meta’s Instagram.
Zuckerberg also took issue with the idea that social media is intentionally addictive or harmful, describing it as a tool that is provides vital information and interaction, and as such, people are naturally inclined to use it more frequently.
Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri testified earlier that just because someone binges on something, such as he did in watching a Netflix show late one night, that kind of attention to a subject is not tantamount to an addiction. He also said that profit comes with protecting minors and not in exploiting them.
In her testimony, K.G.M. said that as a child, she wanted to be on social media sites “all the time,” feeling that if she was not logged on she would “miss out on something,” which would send her “into a panic.”
K.G.M. said she believed she had uploaded more than 200 videos to YouTube by age 10, but her attorney corrected her and said it was actually more than 300.
She said she began using Instagram at about 9 years old, and her addiction to social media led her to develop body-image issues, due in part to filters used to aesthetically enhance photos on the site. She also said she gave up on hobbies and other activities so she could focus on social media sites, which also made it difficult for her to make friends at school since she was so focused on her phone.
K.G.M. said the often-enhanced images she would see on the sites would make her “feel very depressed,” leaving her insecure about her own looks. She said she ultimately was unable to sleep and began contemplating suicide. She said she began cutting herself as a “coping mechanism.”
Various groups that advocate for internet and social-media safety for children issued statements hailing the jury’s verdict.
“For the parents whose children died as a result of social media harms, today’s verdict is a huge step toward truth, justice, and accountability,” Sarah Gardner, CEO of the Washington, D.C.-based Heat Initiative, said in a statement. “This verdict is social media’s Big Tobacco moment — the harm these companies intentionally cause children has been proven in a court of law. The hard truth is the design features at the heart of this trial are still running, right now, on the phones of millions of children, and there are thousands of other families still waiting for their day in court. This is only the beginning of the fight to keep kids safe online, but we will win.”
Nikki Iyer, co-chair of Design It For Us, also applauded the decision, calling it a “major milestone for every young person and family whose pain has been minimized by Big Tech.”
“Today’s decision ends an era of plausible deniability — Meta and YouTube knew their products were harming us, and now so does every legislature, parent and young person in America,” Iyer said.
On Tuesday, a jury in New Mexico found that Meta’s social media platforms were harmful to children, in violation of state statutes, and ordered the company to pay $375 million. Meta officials quickly said they plan to appeal.