A Los Angeles jury found Wednesday that Meta’s Instagram and Google’s YouTube harmed a young user with its features designed to hook kids — in a bombshell verdict that “shakes Big Tech’s predatory business model to its core.”
The high-profile case involved a 20-year-old woman who claimed she became dangerously addicted to the apps at a young age because they were deliberately built to be addictive, using features like infinite scroll and autoplay.
The outcome could influence thousands of similar cases against the two most powerful tech companies — and beyond — brought by parents, states and school districts.
At least half of American teens use YouTube or Instagram daily, according to the Pew Research Center.
The verdict is an “earthquake that shakes Big Tech’s predatory business model to its core,” according to Sacha Haworth, executive director of the online safety watchdog Tech Oversight Project.
“This trial was proof that if you put CEOs like Mark Zuckerberg on the stand before a judge and jury of their peers, the tech industry’s wanton disregard for people will be on full display,” Haworth said in a statement.
The plaintiff, only known as K.G.M., said her addiction fueled depression, anxiety and severe mental health struggles.
For weeks, jurors heard firsthand how K.G.M. felt trapped in the apps’ endless loops, describing sleepless nights and obsessive scrolling she couldn’t control.
Meta and YouTube deny wrongdoing, insisting the platforms are safe — pointing to parental controls and safety tools as evidence of responsible design.
For the first time, social media executives, including Mark Zuckerberg, testified under oath about the inner workings of their products.
Courtroom documents revealed during the trial compared user engagement to addictive substances, showing how platform design encourages long hours of scrolling.
K.G.M.’s lawyers said the apps acted as “digital candy for the brain,” intentionally exploiting young users’ vulnerabilities.
Defense lawyers countered that personal and family factors were the real cause of the plaintiff’s struggles, not the platforms themselves.
Parents of young social media users watched from the gallery, some wiping tears as K.G.M. described the impact of the apps on her daily life.
The trial bypassed Section 230 immunity by targeting product design rather than content, making it a potential turning point for tech accountability.
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