Facebook, Google and other tech giants for more than a decade have rejected allegations that they build products deliberately to get kids addicted to social media.
For the first time, company executives, including
Facebook and Instagram parent Meta and Google’s YouTube are at the center of the trial, with Zuckerberg expected to testify in Los Angeles as early as next week. The trial will serve as a critical test for thousands of similar pending lawsuits that also target
The companies vehemently deny wrongdoing and say they have rolled out tools and resources to support parents with teens. But if they lose, they will face pressure to change the way minors interact with social media and to reach settlements with other plaintiffs that could total billions — a scenario that could be akin to the deals that tarnished the tobacco and
This case, a personal injury suit brought by the Social Media Victims Law Center in Seattle, centers on a 20-year-old woman from Chico, California, identified in filings by the initials K.G.M., who claims she has been addicted to social media for more than a decade. Her nonstop use of the platforms has caused anxiety, depression and body dysmorphia, she alleges.
A lawyer for the woman told jurors Monday that in a quest to make “trillions of dollars,” the companies intentionally engineered the platforms to “trap” children by stimulating their young brains to become hooked on pleasurable rewards similar to how casinos function.
“They use the science of the human brain and my experts will liken it to building a Trojan horse,” attorney
Lanier briefly introduced his client to the court as Kaley, but told the jury she wouldn’t be sitting through the trial for her own good.
“Kaley is now easily overwhelmed and the part of her mind that filters out noise and stress, it was devastated by the defendants’ machine,” he said. “To ask her to sit here for weeks and listen to people talk about her descent would be like asking someone with a broken leg to run a marathon.”
K.G.M. recently
Previous legal challenges to social media firms have mainly taken aim at content alleged to be harmful or disturbing to users. Most have been unsuccessful because social networks, like other internet businesses, are protected by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, a 1996 law that broadly shields online platforms from liability for third-party content posted on their websites.
That protection was designed to keep platforms from unnecessarily censoring posts to ensure freedom of speech, but has been criticized by some US lawmakers as overly broad, outdated and inadequate to deal with the realities of modern internet use.
In the addiction cases, the companies have been able to knock out some allegations by citing Section 230. But the lawyers behind the cases have gained traction in court by arguing that the products themselves — through their design and functionality — have created harms. They contend the primary cause of psychological suffering for young users stems not from content posted by others but from the algorithms programmed by the companies to prioritize engagement. That includes the web design technique known as infinite scrolling, where new content automatically loads at the bottom of the screen as a user scrolls.
K.G.M. “is very typical of so many children in the United States, the harms that they’ve sustained and the way their lives have been altered by the deliberate design decisions of the social media companies,” said Matthew Bergman, founder of the Social Media Victims Law Center and one of the lawyers representing the woman.
Teen Mental Health
While the social media companies can’t rely solely on Section 230 to defend themselves, they have argued in court filings that there isn’t enough evidence to support claims that their product design injures users.
At trial, lawyers for Meta plan to lean on several studies, both internal and external, that reject the idea of a correlation between social media services and teen mental health issues, according to members of Meta’s legal team. They’re also expected to highlight the positive ways in which social media can impact teens, primarily by helping them connect with friends, family and community online.
Meta’s team will dispute that K.G.M.’s health issues arose because of Meta’s products. The company’s lawyers will try to convince the jury that any harm she suffered from engaging with the platforms is from user content not controlled by Meta rather than structure of the products themselves.
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Critics and some outside researchers have long held that social media can have a negative impact on mental health, especially among young people. Australia late last year banned social media for kids under 16 years old, and several other European countries are
Meta has since made several changes to how young people can access its services, most notably creating
The claims in the lawsuits “don’t reflect reality,” Meta said in the post. “The evidence will show a company deeply and responsibly confronting tough questions, conducting research, listening to parents, academics, and safety experts, and taking action.”
YouTube spokesman José Castañeda said the allegations in the litigation are “simply not true.”
“Providing young people with a safer, healthier experience has always been core to our work,” he said in a statement. “In collaboration with youth, mental health and parenting experts, we built services and policies to provide young people with age-appropriate experiences, and parents with robust controls.”
Zuckerberg, Mohan
The trial, which was supposed to start in late January, was delayed following an unexpected health emergency for one of the defense’s lead lawyers. A jury of six women and six men was selected last week. After lawyers for the companies give their opening statements, testimony may run all the way through March.
Instagram head
The outcomes of the first set of trials could encourage settlement talks by showing lawyers the strengths and weaknesses of their arguments and evidence — and ultimately how much the remaining cases are worth, according to
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In addition to the cases in Los Angeles, social media companies face consumer protection suits by about three dozen state attorneys general and public nuisance suits by more than 1,000 public school districts across the US that are grouped before a federal judge in Oakland, California. Those cases, which are expected to start going to trial later this year, also expose the tech giants to billions of dollars in damages and potential changes in how the platforms operate.
(Updates with opening statement by lawyer for plaintiff starting in sixth paragraph.)
--With assistance from
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Kurt Wagner, Peter Blumberg
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