Meta and YouTube found liable in landmark social media addiction trial. 9 hours ago. Kali Hays,Technology reporter,. Nardine Saadand. Regan Morris,Los Angeles. A Los Angeles jury has handed 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 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.. “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.”. 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.. 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, as they had been many days throughout the five-week trial.. When the verdict came through, parents like Amy Neville were seen celebrating, and hugging other parents and supporters who had been waiting for a decision.. 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.. Mike Proulx, a research director for advisory firm Forrester, said the back-to-back verdicts underline a “breaking point” between social media companies and the public.. 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.. “Negative sentiment toward social media has been building for years, and now it’s finally boiled over,” Proulx said.. Getty Images. During his appearance before the juryin February, Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s chairman and chief executive, relied on his company’s longstanding policy of not allowing users under the age of 13 on any of its platforms.. When presented with internal research and documents showing that Meta knew young children were, in fact, using its platforms, Zuckerberg said he “always wished” for faste
