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  "path": "/2026/03/25/meta-google-blamed-womans-social-media-addiction-told-pay-3-000-000-27668799/",
  "publishedAt": "2026-03-25T18:34:55.000Z",
  "site": "https://metro.co.uk",
  "tags": [
    "News",
    "US",
    "Court",
    "Google",
    "Instagram",
    "Meta",
    "Social Media",
    "Youtube",
    "Los Angeles",
    "supports HTML5\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tvideo",
    "Mark Zuckerberg",
    "mental health",
    "depression",
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  "textContent": "A Los Angeles jury on March 25 found Meta and YouTube liable for harming a young woman through the addictive design of their social media platforms (Picture: AFP via Getty)\n\n**Meta and Google have been found liable for a woman’s social media addiction in a landmark case.**\n\nThe case in Los Angeles involves a 20-year-old woman who said she became addicted to Google’s YouTube and Meta’s Instagram at a young age because of their attention-grabbing design.\n\nIdentified only as Kaley during the trial, she described how she began using YouTube at six, downloading the app on her iPod Touch to watch videos about lip gloss and an online kids game.\n\nKaley joined Instagram at nine, getting around a block her mother had put in place to keep her off the platform, and was on social media ‘all day long’, she said.\n\nShe told jurors that her near-constant social media use ‘really affected my self-worth’, saying the apps led her to abandon hobbies, struggle to make friends and constantly measure herself against others.\n\nTo view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tvideo\n\nUp Next\n\nPrevious Page\n\nNext Page\n\nJurors listened to about a month of lawyers’ arguments and evidence, and they heard from Kaley herself, as well as Meta leaders Mark Zuckerberg and Adam Mosseri.\n\nYouTube’s chief executive, Neal Mohan, was not called to give evidence.\n\nA jury found the tech giants were negligent in the design of both apps and failed to warn about their dangers.\n\nThey ordered the companies to pay $3 million in damages – opening the door to potentially far larger punitive awards as thousands of similar cases progress.\n\nJurors also found that both companies knew or should have known their services posed a danger to minors, that they failed to adequately warn users of that danger, and that a reasonable platform operator would have done so.\n\n‘Accountability has arrived,’ lawyers for the plaintiff said in a statement.\n\nA spokesman for Meta said they ‘respectfully disagree’ with the verdict. Google did not have an immediate comment.\n\nSupporters of Kaley react outside the court after the jury found Meta and Google liable in a key test case (Picture: Reuters)\n\nLawyers representing Kaley, led by Mark Lanier, were tasked with proving that the respective defendants’ negligence was a substantial factor in causing Kaley’s harm.\n\nThey pointed to specific features they said were designed to ‘hook’ young users, like the ‘infinite’ nature of feeds that allowed for an endless supply of content, autoplay features, and even notifications.\n\nThe jurors were told not to take into account the content of the posts and videos that Kaley saw on the platforms, because tech companies are shielded from legal responsibility for content posted on their sites thanks to Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act.\n\nMeta consistently argued that Kaley had struggled with her mental health separately from her social media use, often pointing to her turbulent home life.\n\nThe company also said ‘not one of her therapists identified social media as the cause’ of her mental health issues in a statement following closing arguments.\n\nBut the plaintiffs did not have to prove that social media caused Kaley’s struggles, only that it was a ‘substantial factor’ in causing her harm.\n\nYouTube focused less on Kaley’s medical records and mental health history and more on her use of YouTube and the nature of the platform.\n\nThey argued that YouTube is not a form of social media, but rather a video platform akin to television, and pointed to her declining YouTube use as she got older.\n\nIt is seen as a test case accusing Meta and Google’s YouTube of harming children’s mental health through addictive social media platforms (Picture: Reuters)\n\nAccording to their data, she spent about one minute a day on average watching YouTube Shorts since its inception.\n\nYouTube Shorts, which launched in 2020, is the platform’s section of short-form, vertical videos that have the ‘infinite scroll’ feature the plaintiffs argued was addictive.\n\nLawyers representing both platforms also consistently pointed to the safety features and guardrails they each have available for people to monitor and customise their use.\n\nThe case, along with several others, has been randomly selected as a bellwether trial, meaning its outcome could affect the way thousands of similar lawsuits filed against social media companies play out.\n\nThe jury panel assigned Meta 70% of the responsibility for the plaintiff’s harm – a $2.1 million share of the compensatory award – and YouTube the remaining 30%, or $900,000.\n\nJurors further found that both companies had acted with malice, oppression or fraud, a finding that sets the stage for a separate punitive damages phase.\n\nThe trial was one of several that social media companies face this year and beyond.\n\nThey are the culmination of years of scrutiny of the platforms over child safety, and whether the companies make them addictive and serve up content that leads to depression, eating disorders or suicide.\n\nSome experts see the reckoning as reminiscent of cases against tobacco and opioid markets, and the plaintiffs hope that social media platforms will see outcomes similar to those of cigarette makers and drug companies, pharmacies and distributors.\n\n******Get in touch with our news team by emailing us atwebnews@metro.co.uk.******\n\n**For more stories like this,** check our news page.\n\nComment now Comments \nAdd Metro as a Preferred Source on Google\nAdd as preferred source\n",
  "title": "Meta and Google blamed for woman’s social media addiction and told to pay her $3,000,000"
}