Plaintiff testifies in landmark social media addiction trial

LOS ANGELES (CN) — The plaintiff of a landmark social media bellwether trial over the mental health effects of social media on teenagers took the stand on Thursday, recounting to the court how her usage of apps like YouTube and Instagram contributed to her anxiety, depression and body dysmorphia.

“They made me give up a lot,” said Kaley GM, who is now 20 and whose last name is being withheld from proceedings. “My hobbies and my old interests. They prevented me from making friends.” It affected her sleep, her school work, it even diminished her love of the outdoors, she said.

“How much time did social media consume?” asked her attorney, Mark Lanier.

“Every single day I was on it, all day long,” Kaley said.

“Does it still consume you?” Lanier asked.

“Yes.”

“Why don’t you just stop?” Lanier said.

“I can’t. I just can’t be without it,” Kaley said.

Kaley is just one of more than 1,600 plaintiffs in LA Superior Court suing Meta, owner of Instagram and Facebook; Google, the owner of YouTube; TikTok and Snap, maker of Snapchat. They all accuse the tech giants of causing or exacerbated a raft of mental health harms.

Kaley’s case was selected as the first bellwether trial, which may be used to help determine a global settlement. In the weeks leading up to the trial, the first of its kind in the U.S., both TikTok and Snap reached confidential settlements with Kaley, though they remain as defendants in the other cases.

Much of the trial, up to this point, has centered on the app-makers themselves. Lanier has introduced into evidence a slew of internal documents, appearing to show that Meta employees knew that their products were addictive.

Called to testify last week, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg denied the charge that his company’s goal has always been to increase the screen time of its users.

Ultimately, the case is about whether the features on Instagram and YouTube played a significant role in the mental health struggles of a single person — Kaley GM.

In contrast to some of the plaintiffs, whose children committed suicide or attempted to do so, Kaley’s story is less dramatic — although her social media usage will still strike many as extreme.

She testified to growing up on a quiet cul-de-sac in Chico, a small city in Northern California. She began using YouTube at the age of six. When she was eight, she said, she created her own YouTube account, lying about her age. She soon began making her own videos. By the age of 10, she testified, she had uploaded 240 videos to the platform. To date, she has made 360 such videos. She even created nine other accounts so that they could ’like’ and comment on her videos, boosting the apparent appeal of her channel.

If she didn’t get many likes, she said, “It would make me feel it was stupid, or silly, or I looked bad.” She spoke in a low voice, sounding shy and reserved.

Some of the comments on her videos were mean; some rose to the level of bullying, she said. But she kept on using YouTube, she said, “because being off of it bothered me more than the comments, the harassment and bullying.”

When asked if she was addicted to the popular video streaming platform she said yes: “Because I was on it from a young age. I spent all my time on it. I would sneak it. I would watch it in class. Every time I set limits for myself, it didn’t work. I just couldn’t get off.”

When she was nine, she created her first Instagram account — surreptitiously, because her mother wouldn’t have let her. She testified to soon becoming addicted to that app as well.

“I was on it every single day,” Kaley told the jury. “First thing when I woke up, right after school, and then late at night.” She said she wanted to keep up with what was happening amongst her classmates. And when she started watching videos, which play in an endless, continuous stream, she said she always wanted to see what the next one was. One day, she said, she spent 16 hours on Instagram.

Like many teenage girls, Kaley said she disliked how she looked — especially in photographs. In an early YouTube video played in court, she can be heard saying, “I don’t know why I look so fat in this shirt.”

“Put a filter on it” became a common refrain from her and her friend group. One day, according to notes with a former therapist, a peer took pictures of her with her own phone. When she saw them — unfiltered — she started crying, and had what she referred to as a “meltdown.”

Her phone usage was a constant source of tension between her and mother. When Kaley’s mother took away her phone, Kaley said, “A huge part of me felt like it was missing. I couldn’t see who was liking my stuff. It was just like a panic.”

Attorneys for Meta and Google have sought to play down the effects of social media on Kaley’s life, pointing instead pointing to other factors that drove her anxiety and depression, including a learning disability, real-life bullying, the use of other platforms like TikTok and Snapchat, and, above all, her tumultuous home life — her father moved out of the house when she was three, and was not always a presence in her life. Her mother, the defendants say, while at times quite loving and supportive, was at other times physically and emotionally abusive.

When Meta attorney Phyllis Jones asked about an Instagram post in which Kaley talked about her mother screaming at her public, Kaley said, “It was dramaticized by me to get attention.”

Jones played two short video clips that had been posted by Kaley on social media, which included audio of Kaley’s mother shrieking at her. In one, the mother screams, “you’re too fucking lazy to take care of your dog!”

“It must have been scary to have your mom yelling at you like that,” Jones said.

“Yeah, I think it was,” Kaley said, adding: “I posted it, but without the full context. It’s her yelling about something I did. Most of the time it was over chores.”

Later, Jones asked about physical abuse.

“Was it the case that your mom would hit you when you didn’t understand your math homework?” Jones asked.

“She did that a few times,” Kaley said. She later admitted that her mom called her “dumb” and “stupid” a couple times, although that may have been before she was diagnosed with a learning disability.

She said she was also affected by the mental health struggles of her older sister, Keanna, who tried to kill herself. Kaley who was 13 at the time, had to call the police. Keanna also developed an eating disorder.

‘“Mom keeps telling me stop eating," Kaley texted her sister in 2023, when she was 17. “I see how you got an eating disorder.”

“Your mother contributed to your low self-esteem with comments she made,” Jones said.

“At times she did,” Kaley said.

So, too, did comments her father used to make. According to Kaley’s deposition, he would “fat-shame women and sexualize them,” which, Kaley admitted, impacted the way she viewed herself.

Kaley will retake the stand on Friday. The civil trial has been going on for a little more than two weeks, and is scheduled to last until the middle of next month.

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