Court finds Meta, YouTube liable in historic social media addiction case

Meta and YouTube were found liable in a social media addiction case when a Los Angeles jury handed down an unprecedented win for a young woman who sued them 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.

The jury 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. Meta will be expected to shoulder 70% of Kaley's damages award, with Google the remaining 30%. 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. Mike Proulx, a research director for Forrester, said the back-to-back verdicts underline a "breaking point" between social media companies and the public. Kaley said she started using Instagram aged nine and YouTube aged six, and encountered no attempts to block her because of her age.

Meta and Google said separately that they disagreed with the verdict and would both appeal. Meta said: "Teen mental health is profoundly complex and cannot be linked to a single app." They added, "We will continue to defend ourselves vigorously as every case is different, and we remain confident in our record of protecting teens online." A spokesperson for Google said: "This case misunderstands YouTube, which is a responsibly built streaming platform, not a social media site."