Meta and YouTube harmed woman with their app design, jury rules

A Los Angeles jury found Wednesday that Meta’s Instagram and Google’s YouTube harmed a young user with features designed to hook kids — in a bombshell verdict that “shakes Big Tech’s predatory business model to its core.”

The high-profile case involved a 20-year-old woman, known only by her first name Kaley, who claimed she became dangerously obsessed with the apps at a young age because they were deliberately built to be addictive, using features like infinite scroll and autoplay.

The tech giants were found liable for $3 million in compensatory damages for the harm caused. The jury also awarded $3 million in punitive damages.

Meta was ultimately found liable for $4.2 million in damages and Google was found liable for $1.8 million.

The judgment might be a small amount for two of the world’s most valuable companies; however, the bellwether verdict could now influence thousands of similar cases against the powerful tech companies — and their peers — brought by parents, states, and school districts.

At least half of American teens use ​YouTube or Instagram daily, according to the Pew Research Center.

Snapchat and TikTok were also defendants ​in the first-of-its-kind trial; however, both settled with the plaintiff before it began.

The outcome is an “earthquake that shakes Big Tech’s predatory business model to its core,” Sacha Haworth, executive director of the online safety watchdog Tech Oversight Project, declared.

“This trial was proof that if you put CEOs like Mark Zuckerberg on the stand before a judge and jury of their peers, the tech industry’s wanton disregard for people will be on full display,” Haworth said in a statement.

The case was so unprecedented because it bypassed longstanding legal protections, known as Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996, by targeting product design rather than content — making it a turning point for tech accountability.

The landmark judgment is now expected to open the floodgates to more litigation against Big Tech.

“This is a breakthrough because it validates a new theory that platform design can be a defective product,” said Kimberly Pallen, a litigation partner at the law firm Withers, told the New York Times.

“The question really is, what caused the harm that [Kaley] says she’s suffering? Is it the content of the videos and the posts that she has seen and watched on social media platforms? Or is it defects, alleged defects in the design of the platforms themselves?” Clay Calvert, nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, explained to USA Today.

There are more than 3,000 other lawsuits against Meta, YouTube, Snapchat and TikTok pending in California courts, the Wall Street Journal reported.

On Tuesday, a jury in New Mexico ruled that Meta failed to protect kids from sexual predators and misled users about its platforms’ safety.

New Mexico prosecutors argued that Meta hid the extent of safety issues that kids faced on Facebook and Instagram and failed to enforce its claimed minimum age limit of 13 – even as its algorithms allegedly made it easier for creeps to target kids for online harassment and even sex trafficking.

However, the difference in that case was that the investigation included a sting operation in which officials set up test accounts to probe the company’s safety standards. The jury was then asked to determine if Meta violated New Mexico’s consumer protection law.

In the Los Angeles case, Kaley said she began using YouTube at age 6 and Instagram at age 9.

By age 10, she had uploaded more than 200 YouTube videos, and by age 15, she had created 15 Instagram accounts, the jury heard, according to the WSJ.

As her addiction grew, she spent 16 hours in one day on Instagram.

“I wanted to be on it all the time,” she said, the outlet reported. “If I wasn’t on it, I felt like I was going to miss out on something.”

Her spiraling addiction fueled depression, anxiety, and severe mental health struggles, including body dysmorphia and thoughts of self-harm, she testified.

For weeks, jurors heard firsthand how Kaley felt trapped in the apps’ endless loops, describing sleepless nights and obsessive scrolling she couldn’t control.

She described how the apps’ notifications for new likes and comments gave her a “rush” that she wanted to continually chase.

Big Tech has faced mounting criticism over child safety in the last decade. 

Other families who had been harmed by social media celebrated the decision outside the courthouse, saying they feel “vindicated” — but insisted that the war “is not over.”

The visibly emotional parents stood together holding photos of their children — some of whom died as a result of the platforms’ addictive nature and lack of guardrails to protect kids. The families were not part of the lawsuit.

“This is not over — we know this is a long game,” said Juliana Arnold, the mother of a 17-year-old who died of fentanyl poisoning after trying to buy Percocet on social media.

“We don’t want any more hearings. We don’t want any more loopholes in these bills. We don’t want lawmakers shielding Big Tech. We want them to do their jobs and keep American families safe.”

The mom of a 15-year-old New York boy who shot himself after being targeted in a Facebook “sextortion” scam said she hopes that every American “giving their kid a device is paying attention.”

Mary Rodee’s son, Riley Basford, killed himself in 2021 as he was being blackmailed over “personal” photos that he had sent on social media, his family said.

Rodee offered her support to other grieving families.

“I am really wanting to rally the parents of harmed children and the parents who are living with this right now — to just show I wasn’t crazy for five years, that I knew they did this to my kid, and they’re doing it to your kid too,” she impassionately told The Post.

“And we don’t have to take this and we’re here for you,” she added.

Meta and YouTube deny wrongdoing, insisting the platforms are safe — pointing to parental controls and safety tools as evidence of responsible design.

In a statement after the verdict was reached, Meta said, “We respectfully disagree with the verdict and are evaluating our legal options.”

Google also indicated that it would appeal.

“We disagree with the verdict and plan to appeal. This case misunderstands YouTube, which is a responsibly built streaming platform, not a social media site.” Google spokesperson José Castañeda said in a statement.

The landmark trial saw, for the first time, social media executives, including Mark Zuckerberg, testify under oath about the inner workings of their products.

“This is the first time in history a jury has heard testimony by executives and seen internal documents that we believe prove these companies chose profits over children,” said Joseph VanZandt, one of Kaley’s lawyers, the New York Times reported.

Courtroom documents revealed during the trial compared user engagement to addictive substances, showing how platform design encourages long hours of scrolling.

Kaley’s lawyers said the apps acted as “digital candy for the brain,” intentionally exploiting young users’ vulnerabilities.

Defense lawyers countered that personal and family factors were the real cause of the plaintiff’s struggles, not the platforms themselves.

Meta’s lawyer, Andrew Stanner, argued that Kaley suffered a difficult family life and was bullied at school. He said notes from her six months of therapy did not mention social media addiction, according to the WSJ.

Parents of young social media users watched from the gallery, some wiping tears as Kaley described the impact of the apps on her daily life.

Kaley’s lawyers hailed the verdict as a “referendum” on Wednesday.

“For years, social media companies have profited from targeting children while concealing their addictive and dangerous design features,” the lawyers said in a statement.

“Today’s verdict is a referendum — from a jury, to an entire industry — that accountability has arrived.”

With additional reporting by Thomas Barrabi and Post wires

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