The world's largest social media companies have been accused of creating addiction machines as a landmark trial began in California examining the mental health effects of Instagram and YouTube.
In his opening argument before Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Carolyn B. Kuhl and a jury, Mark Lanier argued that his client, plaintiff K.G.M., suffered from mental health issues as a result of her social media addiction.
These companies built machines designed to addict the brains of children, and they did it on purpose, Lanier said.
Lawyers for Meta and YouTube told the jury that K.G.M.'s addiction stemmed from other issues in her life, not their negligence.
K.G.M. will be referred to by her initials, or as Kaley G.M., because the alleged harms took place when she was a minor.
Lanier charged that Meta and YouTube failed to warn of the dangers to young users posed by the design of their platforms and demonstrated this by displaying children's blocks with the words Addicting, Brains, and Children next to the letters A, B, and C.
This case is about two of the richest corporations in history who have engineered addiction in childrens' brains, he said. I'm going to show you the addiction machine that they built, the internal documents that people normally don't get to see, and emails from [Meta CEO] Mark Zuckerberg and YouTube executives.
In a selected portion of a 2015 email, Zuckerberg demanded increases in time spent on Meta platforms by 12% to meet internal business goals. Lanier accused YouTube of intentionally targeting young users to generate higher revenues from advertisers.
Meta attorney Paul Schmidt countered by suggesting the trauma K.G.M. experienced in her family life, including neglect and abuse, was beyond the technology company's control, urging the jury to consider her other struggles amidst the allegations.
The proceedings mark the beginning of a trial that may last six weeks, with profound implications for how similar lawsuits may be addressed nationwide. With the testimony set to include family members and executives from both companies, the outcome could drastically influence legal standards around social media and mental health.
As parents fill the gallery, testifying to the harms they believe their children endured due to social media's design, the stakes for Instagram and YouTube have never been higher. Other tech firms, including Snapchat and TikTok, previously settled similar claims, setting the stage for what could unfold in this groundbreaking case.
