Teen social media addiction trial set to kick off in LA

LOS ANGELES (CN) — For the first time ever, the world’s social media giants will go on trial for their role in what plaintiffs describe as an epidemic of teen addiction to the apps Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube.

Jury selection in the landmark civil trial is set to begin Tuesday in a Downtown LA courtroom, with opening arguments expected the following week.

At issue: were Meta, Google and ByteDance negligent in designing their platforms to maximize the time spent on them? The jury will consider if that negligence a substantial factor in causing anxiety, depression and social media addiction to a single person — a now-19-year-old unnamed woman, known only in the proceedings as K.G.M.

It is the first bellwether trial in a coordinated judicial proceeding on the issue and could help set a benchmark for how much money, if any, the tech companies owe over thousands of consolidated personal injury lawsuits filed by families who say their children were harmed by social media.

“It is the first case where a jury will hear the evidence that the social media companies intentionally designed their platforms to addict children for the purpose of selling the children’s minutes to advertisers,” the plaintiffs’ attorney, Josh Autry of the firm Morgan & Morgan, said. “And the consequences of that — we now have a generation of children that have been struggling with this social media addiction.”

The month-long trial will feature at least one highly anticipated star witness: Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Meta, which owns both Facebook and Instagram, whom the judge has ordered to testify in person.

“The evidence is quite strong that the decisions in these cases were not made by rogue level employees,” Autry said. “When you look at the highest level executives — they were directing these decisions to choose business growth over safety features. To choose growing the amount of time that’s being consumed by children and teenagers, as opposed to putting reasonable limits on that time.”

Up until recently, social media companies have been shielded from a wide range of litigation by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which protects online platforms from liability based on content generated by third parties.

But when the first of lawsuits in this case was filed, attorneys with the Social Media Victims Law Center based their legal arguments on product liability law. The harm, they argued, wasn’t just the content, but the design of the apps.

LA Superior Court Judge Carolyn Kuhl accepted that argument and rejected the tech firms’ motions to dismiss the lawsuit — though she did dismiss similar lawsuits filed by school districts.

“For us, this is a culmination of a three-and-a-half year struggle to provide parents with their day in court,” Matthew Bergman, the Social Media Victims Law Center’s founding attorney, said. “This trial is going to be hard fought, but simply being allowed to present the evidence before an impartial jury in a court of law is a tremendous victory for families and parents nationwide.”

At a hearing in October, the plaintiffs’ attorneys played some short video clips of K.G.M.’s deposition for the first time, offering a preview of what her testimony might look like.

“I have gotten a lot of content promoting that kind of stuff — just like body-checking, posts [of] what I eat in a day — just a cucumber — making people feel bad if they don’t eat like that," she said in one clip.

Each of the apps, one of her attorneys said, were a substantial factor in her spiral into depression and anxiety, fueled by low self-esteem and body dysmorphia.

In another clip, she claimed to have has received more than 50 sexually explicit photos over Snapchat from people she didn’t know and that she experienced what she called “sexual grooming.” She also said “filters” which alter photos on Instagram and Snapchat contributed to her body dysmorphia and low self-image.

Snap was set to be a defendant in the trial, but on Tuesday, the Santa Monica-based company reached a settlement with K.G.M. They are still a defendant in the other proceedings, at least for now.

Another design feature that the plaintiffs say has played a role in teen social media addiction is the “infinite scroll” feature on Instagram and Facebook, along with the “autoplay” feature on YouTube.

The plaintiffs say those features have helped keep them glued to their phones for eight hours a day or more. They also call attention to “likes” — how getting a “like” causes a dopamine hit, which can prove addictive.

“When you’re 12, or 11, or nine, those dopamine hits are much less resistible,” said Autry. “They knew that adolescents were more susceptible.”

The remaining social media defendants, who did not respond to emails requesting a comment on this story, are expected to argue that there’s no evidence that K.G.M.’s depression and anxiety was caused by social media use. They may also argue that the harm to K.G.M. was caused by content she viewed on social media, but not the apps’ design features. That might be a difficult distinction for a jury to make.

There is a similar case proceeding in federal court in Northern California, a multi-district litigation brought by 42 states as well as cities, school districts and individuals. That case is expected to hold its first bellwether trial later this year.

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