The lead plaintiff in a landmark lawsuit alleging addictive practices by social media platforms testified Thursday that she began using such sites when she was as young as 6 years old, and before she was 10, she had uploaded hundreds of videos onto YouTube.
Identified in court only as K.G.M., the 20-year-old Chico woman’s lawsuit is one of several bellwether cases challenging the practices of YouTube and Meta — parent company of Facebook and Instagram. TikTok and Snap were originally defendants in the lawsuit, but both reached settlements before the trial began.
Hundreds of similar lawsuits are still pending, with the initial trial being closely watched by industry experts.
K.G.M. and other plaintiffs contend social media platforms use addictive practices aimed at hooking young users, leading to mental health problems such as depression and anxiety, in some cases leading them to harm themselves.
On the stand Thursday, 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 that she would “miss out on something,” which would send her “into a panic.”
K.G.M. said that 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 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 made 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.”
According to her suit, brought in July 2023, K.G.M.’s mother did not want her using social media and tried using third-party software to prevent her daughter’s use, but the companies design their products in a manner that allow children to avoid parental consent — and K.G.M. did just that.
Prompted by the addictive design of the Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok products, and the constant notifications that Meta, Snapchat and TikTok began pushing to her 24 hours daily, K.G.M. developed a nonstop compulsion to engage with the products, the suit alleged.
She did not know that each company made programming decisions aimed at targeting K.G.M., the suit states. For example, Meta and Snap’s AI user recommendation and connection tools facilitated and created connections between minor plaintiff K.G.M. and complete strangers, including predatory adults and others she did not know in real life and would not have met but for the seemingly random connections these companies made, the suit further stated.
Meta’s and TikTok’s product designs also targeted K.G.M. with harmful and depressive content, urging K.G.M. to commit acts of self-harm, as well as harmful social comparison and body image, the suit stated.
“These are connections and content K.G.M. did not seek out or even want to see; instead, these are the types of harms defendants aimed at her in their efforts to prevent her from looking away at any cost,” the suit alleged.
At one point, K.G.M. allegedly suffered bullying and sextortion via Instagram, and she and her mother never could determine whether the abuser was someone who knew K.G.M. in real life or was a random stranger to whom Instagram connected her.
“In fact, it took K.G.M.’s friends and family spamming and asking other Instagram users to report the persons targeting minor K.G.M. for a two- week period before Meta did anything about the abuses, violation of terms and illegal conduct of which it, by then, had full knowledge,” the complaint states.
The more K.G.M. accessed the companies’ products, the worse her mental health became, the suit alleges.
The trial is being closely watched as a test case for hundreds of similar pending lawsuits. The cases all generally allege various damages from what attorneys call addictive social-media platforms powered by “complex algorithms designed to exploit human psychology.”
Some legal observers predict the trial’s outcome could have an influence on future social-media platform regulation and accountability.
The social media companies are strongly contesting all allegations in K.G.M.’s lawsuit and maintain they are committed to the well-being of its 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 verbal and physical abuse by her parents — led to her mental health struggles.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified previously that while preteens 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.
When asked by a plaintiff’s attorney if a firm should be taking advantage of vulnerable platform users, Zuckerberg said the companies should “try to help” the people who use their services.
He later 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.