Arguments in a Landmark Social Media Addiction Trial Start Next Week. This Is What's at Stake

Google and Meta some contradict the allegations successful the complaint. “Providing young radical with a safer, healthier acquisition has ever been halfway to our work,” said Google spokesperson José Castañeda successful a statement. “In collaboration with youth, intelligence health, and parenting experts, we built services and policies to supply young radical with age-appropriate experiences, and parents with robust controls.”

“For implicit a decade, we’ve listened to parents, worked with experts and instrumentality enforcement, and conducted in-depth probe to recognize the issues that substance most,” said Meta spokesperson Stephanie Otway successful a statement. “We usage these insights to marque meaningful changes—like introducing Teen Accounts with built-in protections and providing parents with tools to negociate their teens’ experiences.”

The Bellwether Case

K.G.M started watching YouTube astatine the property of six, had an Instagram relationship erstwhile she was 11, got connected Snapchat astatine 13, and TikTok 1 twelvemonth after—with each app allegedly furthering “her spiral into anxiousness and depression, fueled by debased self-esteem and assemblage dysmorphia,” according to her lawyer Joseph VanZandt. She, on with her parent Karen Glenn, filed a suit against Meta, Google’s YouTube, Snap, and TikTok alleging that features specified arsenic “autoplay” and “infinite scroll” contributed to her societal media addiction, and that societal media usage contributed to her anxiousness and depression, making her consciousness much insecure astir herself. (Snap and TikTok settled the lawsuit with KGM earlier the trial. Terms were not disclosed.)

Glenn testified past twelvemonth that she did not recognize the harm these platforms could bash to her daughter, and that she wouldn’t person fixed her a telephone if she’d known astir these harms previously. Bergman says K.G.M’s suit has been chosen arsenic the “bellwether” lawsuit due to the fact that she is “representative of truthful galore different young women who person suffered superior intelligence wellness harms and affectional ailments and disturbances arsenic a effect of societal media.”

“The extremity of the attorneys bringing these cases is not conscionable to prevail and person compensation for their idiosyncratic clients,” says Benjamin Zipursky, a instrumentality prof astatine Fordham University School of Law. “They purpose to get a bid of victories successful this sampling of alleged ‘bellwether trials.’ Then they volition effort to unit the companies into a wide colony successful which they wage retired perchance billions of dollars and besides hold to alteration their practices.”

K.G.M’s is the archetypal of 22 specified bellwether trials to beryllium held successful the superior tribunal of Los Angeles. A affirmative result successful the favour of the plaintiff could springiness the remaining astir 1,600 litigants important leverage—and perchance unit tech companies to clasp caller safeguards. The proceedings besides promises to rise broader consciousness astir societal media concern models and practices. “If the nationalist has a precise antagonistic absorption to what emerges, oregon what a assemblage finds, past this could impact authorities astatine the authorities oregon national level,” Zipursky adds.

Bergman, who spent 25 years representing asbestos victims, says this proceedings feels similar a repetition of what happened successful the past. “When Frances Haugen testified successful beforehand of Congress and for the archetypal clip revealed what societal media companies cognize their platforms are doing to get susceptible young people, I realized that this was asbestos each implicit again” says Bergman.

Dividing Lines

Seeking to gully parallels from merchandise liability cases against Big Tobacco and the automotive industry, the main statement that the plaintiffs are alleging is that large tech companies designed their societal media platforms successful a negligent manner, meaning they did not instrumentality tenable steps to debar causing harm. “Specifically, the plaintiffs are arguing that plan features specified arsenic infinite scroll and autoplay caused definite injuries to minors, including disordered eating, self-harm, and suicide,” says Mary Anne Franks, a instrumentality prof astatine George Washington University.

On the different side, the tech companies volition apt absorption connected causation and escaped code defenses. “The defendants volition reason that it was third-party contented that caused the plaintiffs’ injuries, not the entree to this contented that was provided by the platforms,” says Franks. The companies whitethorn besides apt argue, she says, “that to the grade the companies’ decision-making astir contented moderation is implicated, that decision-making is protected by the First Amendment,” citing the US Supreme Court’s 2024 ruling successful Moody v. Netchoice.