Jury finds Meta and Google negligent in social media addiction trial

A California jury found Instagram owner Meta and Google parent Alphabet liable Wednesday in a lawsuit filed by a 20-year-old woman who claimed YouTube and Instagram were designed to addict children.

judgment, Reuters reported it earlierIt could have wide-ranging ramifications in a host of similar liability cases that have accused tech giants of deliberately creating addictive platforms to attract children as users.

Meta and Google will have to pay $3 million in damages, to be split between the two tech giants. Meta will pay 70% while Google will pay the remaining 30%. It is possible that additional punitive measures will be taken as the court continues to evaluate this case.

“We respectfully disagree with the ruling and are evaluating our legal options,” a Meta spokesperson told CNET in an emailed statement.

The trial centered on a 20-year-old woman, known as KGM or Kaley. The case used her experiences with Instagram and YouTube when she was young to illustrate claims that Meta and Google deliberately designed their social media sites to keep young people surfing. It focused on specific design choices, such as recommendation algorithms. She claimed that her addiction to social media contributed to her suffering from severe body dysmorphia, depression, and suicidal tendencies.

Meta and Google denied the allegations. The jury ruled that the technology companies’ negligence played a “significant factor” in the mental health damage.

TikTok and Snap were part of the original lawsuit But he settled with the plaintiff in Januarybefore the case goes to trial.

“The era of invincible Big Tech companies is over,” Sascha Haworth, executive director of the Technology Watch Project, said in a statement. “After years of the spotlight from companies like Google and Meta, new evidence and testimonials have pulled back the curtain and validated the harms that young people and parents have been telling the world about for years.”

Several high-ranking executives from Meta and Google testified during the trial, including Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg And Instagram chief Adam Mosseri. Mosseri said in February that it was “Problematic” to describe social media as clinically addictive.

Social media platforms have offered specific settings and tools for their younger users, but many of them were launched relatively recently, in the past few years.

A jury in New Mexico is scheduled Tuesday Imposing sanctions amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars In a similar case brought by that country over allegations that the company enabled the sexual exploitation of children and misled consumers about the safety of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.

This is a developing story and will be updated.