The social media company Meta and the video streaming service YouTube harmed a young user with design features that were addictive and led to her mental health distress, a jury found on Wednesday, a landmark decision that could open social media companies to more lawsuits over users’ well-being.
Meta and YouTube must pay $3 million in compensatory damages for pain and suffering and other financial burdens. Meta is responsible for 70 percent of that cost and YouTube for the remainder.
The bellwether case, which was brought by a now 20-year-old woman identified as K.G.M., had accused social media companies of creating products as addictive as cigarettes or digital casinos. K.G.M. sued Meta, which owns Instagram and Facebook, and Google’s YouTube over features like infinite scroll and algorithmic recommendations that she claimed led to anxiety and depression.
The jury of seven women and five men will deliberate further to decide what further punitive damages the companies should pay for malice or fraud.
The verdict in K.G.M.’s case — one of thousands of lawsuits filed by teenagers, school districts and state attorneys general against Meta, YouTube, TikTok and Snap, which owns Snapchat — was a major win for the plaintiffs. The finding validates a novel legal theory that social media sites or apps can cause personal injury. It is likely to factor into similar cases expected to go to trial this year, which could expose the internet giants to further financial damages and force changes to their products.
The personal liability argument draws inspiration from a legal playbook used against Big Tobacco last century, in which lawyers argued that the companies created addictive products that harmed users. The companies have largely dodged legal threats by citing a federal shield that protects them from liability for what their users post.
TikTok and Snap both settled with the plaintiff for undisclosed terms before the trial started.
Wednesday’s verdict follows a ruling by a New Mexico jury in another case brought by the state attorney general there, which found Meta liable for violating state law by failing to safeguard users of its apps from child predators. That jury decided that Meta should pay $375 million in the case that was brought by New Mexico’s attorney general.
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Cecilia Kang reports on technology and regulatory policy for The Times from Washington. She has written about technology for over two decades.
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