Parents and campaign groups seeking tighter restrictions on social media have welcomed a Los Angeles jury handing down an unprecedented win for a young woman who sued Meta and YouTube over her childhood addiction to social media.
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’s mental health.
The woman, known as Kaley, was awarded $6m (£4.5m) in damages, a result likely to have implications for hundreds of similar cases now winding their way through US courts.
Meta and Google said they disagreed with the verdict and intended to appeal.
Jurors found that Kaley should receive $3m in compensatory damages and an additional $3m punitive damages, because they determined Meta and Google “acted with malice, oppression, or fraud” in the way the companies operated their platforms.
Parents of other children, who are not part of Kaley’s 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.
The LA verdict came a day after a jury in New Mexico found Meta liable for the way in which its platforms endangered children and exposed them to sexually explicit material and contact with sexual predators.
In recent months, countries such as Australia have imposed restrictions for children to stop or limit their use of social media. The UK is currently running a pilot programme to see how a ban of social media for people aged under 16 may work.
Meta’s growth goals were aimed at getting young people to use its platforms, Kaley’s lawyers said.
Using testimony from experts and former Meta executives, they argued the company wanted young users because they were more likely to stick with its platforms for longer stretches of time.
Source: Meta and YouTube found liable in social media addiction trial