Meta and Google hit with $6 million verdict for social media harms to young woman

LOS ANGELES (CN) — After more than eight days of deliberation, a downtown LA jury on Wednesday found tech giants Meta and Google liable in a civil suit brought by a now-20-year-old woman, known in court only as Kaley GM.

The 12 jurors also ordered the two companies to pay Kaley $6 million in damages, with 70% to be paid by Meta, parent of Instagram and Facebook, and 30% to be paid by Google, which operates YouTube. Half of that amount involves punitive damages.

After the verdict, plaintiff’s attorney Mark Lanier said Kaley felt “grateful” and “vindicated,” and that the verdict, the first of its kind in the country, would be of “great importance to a generation of people who have been affected social media.”

In an email, a Meta spokesperson said: “We respectfully disagree with the verdict and will appeal. Teen mental health is profoundly complex and cannot be linked to a single app. We will continue to defend ourselves vigorously as every case is different, and we remain confident in our record of protecting teens online.”

Google spokesman Jose Casañeda said that his company, too, would appeal, adding, “This case misunderstands YouTube, which is a responsibly built streaming platform, not a social media site.”

When asked how the they arrived at their judgment, Victoria, a juror who wanted to be identified by her first name only, said they “looked at the average that a person would make [for] the rest of her life… And considering what she’s gone through and what job she would be able to hold down.” She said they were tempted to award more money for punitive damages.

“We wanted them to feel it,” Victoria said of Meta and Google. “We wanted them to realize this wasn’t acceptable.”

But the jury worried about “handing the money over to one person,” Victoria said, adding: “We thought if it could be given little by little, to spend it wisely, to last a long time, we probably would’ve went higher.”

Kaley is the first of nearly 2,500 plaintiffs in a consolidated case in Southern California suing four tech companies — Google, Meta, TikTok and Snap — who say their social media and streaming platforms were designed in ways that caused or worsened depression, anxiety and body dysmorphia in minors.

TikTok and Snap settled with Kaley in the weeks before her bellwether trial but remain defendants in the broader consolidated litigation. The trial’s outcome could help spur a global settlement, though eight more bellwether trials are being prepared, with the next one scheduled to start this summer.

Kaley began watching YouTube videos at age 6. In closing arguments, Lanier called the platform her “gateway,” arguing it created neural pathways that left her vulnerable to future addictions. She joined Instagram at 9, and by her teens, social media had become a daily obsession, keeping her up late and isolating her from friends.

Lanier said Instagram’s “beauty filters,” which can smooth skin and make users appear thinner, reinforced Kaley’s belief that she was “fat” and unattractive. Even when she experienced online bullying, she said, she could not put her phone down.

“Every single day I was on it, all day long,” Kaley testified in February. “I just can’t be without it.”

Much of the monthlong trial focused on internal documents in which employees at Meta and Google appeared to acknowledge their platforms were addictive and targeted children.

In one message, an Instagram employee wrote: “We’re basically pushers … We’re causing reward deficit disorder, because people are binging on Instagram so much they can’t feel the reward.”

A YouTube strategy memo similarly stated: “If we want to win big with teens, we must bring them in as tweens.”

Meta argued Kaley’s mental health struggles stemmed from other causes, including a learning disability and a difficult home life. Her parents divorced when she was 3, and her father was largely absent. Trial evidence also showed her mother was at times physically and emotionally abusive, including a secretly recorded video of her yelling at Kaley. When Kaley was 13, her sister attempted suicide and was later hospitalized for an eating disorder.

“If you took Instagram away, would anything be different?” Schmidt, Meta’s attorney, asked jurors in closing arguments. “That’s the core question in this case.”

Schmidt pointed to medical records introduced at trial that focused largely on Kaley’s relationships with friends and family. He also quoted a psychiatrist who testified that social media use “was not the through line of what I recall being her main issues.”

Li, Google’s attorney, argued YouTube was neither social media nor addictive, and that Kaley’s use of the service peaked when she was 8, and then began to wane.

“This was not rewiring her brain,” Li said in his closing argument. “This was a toy that Ms. GM picked up and put down a decade ago.”

The closely watched landmark trial featured the testimony of the fifth-richest man in the world, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. He insisted that Instagram was “a good thing that has value in people’s lives.”

Jurors deliberated over the question of liability and the amount of compensatory damages for more than eight days — longer than any other case Lanier’s litigated in 42 years of practice, and an experience another juror called “life consuming.” Because they found the two tech companies acted with malice or fraud, that triggered a second phase of the trial over punitive damages — though that phase took only about 40 minutes.

In a short speech to the jury, Lanier did not ask for an exact amount, but suggested that it would take an award in the tens of billions to seriously punish Google and Meta.

“These companies are not just the wealthiest, these companies are the most influential and most powerful,” Lanier told the jurors. “You’ve got to talk to Meta in Meta money.”

The soft-spoken Schmidt offered a more modest proposal: an additional $3 million. And that’s exactly what the jury decided to do, after less than 45 minutes of discussion.

“I would’ve thought it was likely we would’ve gotten a bigger number,” Lanier told reporters outside the courthouse, though he added: “I trust the system. I trust people to assess what’s right and best.”

He also said a $6 million award is more likely to hold up on appeal than one in the billions.

“We got what we needed,” he said. “This is the tip of the spear.”

In addition to the coordinated proceeding in Southern California, there is a multidistrict litigation in Northern California, comprising nearly 800 personal injury plaintiffs and more than 1,100 school districts, cities, counties, tribes and state attorneys general.

And while monumental, Wednesday’s verdict pales in comparison to one issued yesterday, when a jury in New Mexico ordered Meta to pay a staggering $375 million to the state for violating consumer protection law by enabling child sexual exploitation on Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. That was the first time a social media company has ever been held liable by a jury for harming underage users; Wednesday’s verdict marks the second.

There are numerous other lawsuits scattered about the country targeting individual social media companies — for example, 11 plaintiffs are suing Snap in LA Superior Court over claims drug dealers are allowed to sell their wares on the messaging platform.

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