A Los Angeles jury has found Meta and YouTube liable for negligence in designing their platforms — ruling that the apps were intentionally built to be addictive to children. The plaintiff was awarded $6 million in damages. For trillion-dollar companies, the figure is almost symbolic. But this marks the first time in the United States that a jury has declared social media platforms defective products. Roughly two thousand similar lawsuits are waiting in the wings.
Seven Weeks, One Verdict
The trial ran from late January in Los Angeles County Superior Court. The plaintiff — a 20-year-old from Chico, California, identified in court documents as K.G.M. — said she started using YouTube at age six and Instagram at eleven.
Infinite scroll, autoplay video, beauty filters and push notifications pulled her into a spiral she couldn’t escape. The result: anxiety, depression, body dysmorphia and suicidal ideation.
On the stand, Kaley testified that she sometimes spent 16 hours a day on Instagram — slipping out to school bathrooms to check her likes, unable to focus in class.
Lawyers for Meta and YouTube argued her struggles stemmed from a difficult childhood and home environment, not the apps. The jury disagreed.
Zuckerberg on the Stand
On February 18, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified in person — the first time he has faced a jury in a case over social media’s harm to children. Plaintiff’s attorney Mark Lanier questioned him for several hours.
Zuckerberg maintained that the company does not seek to create addiction. Lanier responded with internal Meta documents suggesting otherwise.
One was a 2022 self-assessment by Instagram chief Adam Mosseri, outlining his primary objective: keep Instagram “culturally relevant,” with key metrics being time in app and sharing — especially among teenagers.
Another internal document showed daily usage targets: 40 minutes in 2023, rising to 46 minutes by 2026. Zuckerberg called the figures “benchmarks,” not “goals.”
The cross-examination reached its peak when six attorneys unrolled a 30-foot collage of hundreds of selfies Kaley had posted to Instagram as a child — many edited with beauty filters. Zuckerberg stared at it in silence.
When Lanier asked how a girl under 13 — Meta’s stated minimum age — could use the app so extensively, the CEO said some users lie about their age when signing up.
How the Verdict Breaks Down
Jurors deliberated for nine days — more than 44 hours in total. At one point they told Judge Carolyn B. Kuhl they were deadlocked on one of the defendants.
Ultimately, 10 of 12 jurors voted to hold both companies liable on all counts. The award: $3 million in compensatory damages and $3 million in punitive damages. Meta was assigned 70 percent of the total — $4.2 million — and YouTube 30 percent, or $1.8 million. Jurors found the companies acted with malice, oppression or fraud, which under California law is required to justify punitive damages.
TikTok and Snapchat were also named as defendants but settled before trial. Terms were not disclosed.
Two Blows in Two Days
One day before the Los Angeles verdict — on March 24 — a separate jury in Santa Fe ruled against Meta in a case brought by the state of New Mexico. The state accused the company of violating consumer protection laws by knowingly allowing child sexual exploitation on its platforms without adequate intervention. The penalty: $375 million.
New Mexico prosecutors called it the first time a state has prevailed against a major tech company on such claims. A second phase begins May 4, when a judge will determine whether Meta created a “public nuisance” and whether the company must fund programs to address the harm.
Meta said it intends to appeal both verdicts. The company’s spokespersons described teen mental health as “a complex issue that can’t be attributed to any one app.” Google called YouTube “a responsibly designed streaming platform, not a social network.”
Why This Matters for the Bay Area
Meta is headquartered in Menlo Park. A federal multidistrict proceeding consolidating lawsuits over addictive platform design has been centralized in Oakland since 2022. Roughly two thousand similar cases have been filed by families, school districts and attorneys general in more than 40 states.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta responded to both verdicts, writing on X that the state “looks forward to holding Meta accountable at our own August trial in the Bay Area.”
Plaintiff attorneys and legal scholars are drawing comparisons to the tobacco litigation of the 1990s — when the major cigarette companies spent years denying the dangers of smoking before a string of verdicts forced them to pay hundreds of billions of dollars and overhaul their business practices.
Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, author of “The Anxious Generation,” has estimated potential cumulative damages in the hundreds of billions.
The next bellwether trial — involving a male plaintiff — is scheduled for late 2026. Silicon Valley’s legal war with its own users is just getting started.