Meta and YouTube have been found liable on all seven counts in a landmark trial in Los Angeles that could shape the future of social media in the United States.
The verdict comes a day after a similar result was reached on a case in New Mexico, where a jury ordered Meta to pay $375 million for violating consumer protection laws.
In the LA case, a jury awarded the 20-year-old plaintiff, identified as Kaley or KGM in court documents, $3 million in compensatory damages. After more than 40 hours of deliberation across nine days, California jurors decided that Meta and YouTube were negligent in the design or operation of their platforms and that this negligence was a substantial factor in causing harm to Kaley, The Associated Press reports.
The jury specifically found that the companies knew their platform designs were dangerous for minors and failed to provide adequate warnings about those risks.
Kaley testified that her use of social media as a child, starting with YouTube at age 6 and Instagram at age 9, caused her to become addicted to the technology and exacerbated her mental health struggles. While Meta argued her issues stemmed from a turbulent home life, the legal threshold only required the plaintiff to prove the platforms were a “substantial factor” in her harm, rather than the sole cause.
The multimillion-dollar verdict is expected to increase, as the jury decided the companies acted with malice, oppression or fraud. This means the trial will now move into a second phase to determine punitive damages, where jurors will review new evidence to decide on a final penalty.
Meta and Google-owned YouTube were the two remaining defendants in this case. TikTok and Snap settled before the trial began.
In assigning blame, jurors determined that Meta held the majority of the responsibility, saddling the company with 70 percent of the liability compared to 30 percent for YouTube.
“We respectfully disagree with the verdict and are evaluating our legal options,” Meta said in a statement to the AP.
The decision was reached by a 10-2 majority on the primary liability claims, as only nine of the 12 jurors were required to agree under California law.
Lawyers representing Kaley, led by Mark Lanier, pointed to specific design features they said were intended to “hook” young users, such as the infinite nature of feeds, autoplay features and notifications.
Lawyers for YouTube noted that Kaley spent only about 1 minute per day on “YouTube Shorts” since its 2020 launch. However, the court instructed jurors to focus on these design mechanics rather than the specific content of posts, which remains protected under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.
During deliberations, defense attorney Laura Marquez-Garrett called the trial a “vehicle” for getting internal corporate documents into the public record, comparing the tech industry’s current scrutiny to past legal battles against the tobacco and opioid industries.
This case is considered historic and its outcome could affect thousands of similar lawsuits filed against social media companies.
