Ruling that Meta and YouTube deliberately designed addictive products marks possible watershed moment for social media
The young woman at the heart of what has been called the tech industry’s “big tobacco” moment was on YouTube at six and Instagram by nine. More than a decade later, she says, she still can’t live without the social media she became addicted to.
“I can’t, it’s too hard to be without it,” Kaley, now 20, told a jury at Los Angeles’ superior court. This week, five men and seven women handed down a verdict on the design of two of the world’s most popular apps that vindicated Kaley’s position.
The ruling sent shockwaves through Silicon Valley and sparked hope among families and child safety campaigners that change may finally be coming to social media. Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta and Google’s YouTube were found liable for deliberately designing addictive products used by Kaley and millions of other young people.
It was one case centred on the suffering of one young person who became depressed at 10 and self-harmed, but Kaley, referred to by her first name or the initials KGM in order to protect her privacy, was the figurehead for a much bigger fight.
“We wanted them to feel it,” one of the jurors explained to reporters. “We wanted them to realise this was unacceptable.”
“The era of big tech invincibility is over,” said the Tech Oversight Project, a Washington DC watchdog that styles itself as a David to Silicon Valley’s Goliath. Even Prince Harry weighed in: “The truth has been heard and precedent has been set.” The share prices of Meta and Alphabet, Google’s parent company, sank.
The verdict was the second blow in a week for big tech after Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, was ordered to pay $375m (£282m) by a New Mexico court. A jury found it misled consumers about the safety of its platforms. These had features that “enabled paedophiles and predators to engage in child sexual exploitation” and were intentionally designed to get young people addicted to them, said the state’s department of justice.
At $6m, the damages in the California suit were relatively small, but the consequences of the double verdicts will be much greater. It was a week in which a years-long campaign to shift the balance of power between big tech and children finally seemed to gain momentum.
Meta, YouTube, Snapchat and TikTok are facing thousands of similar lawsuits in US courts, testing if their platforms were designed to be addictive. If they lose, the damages could be crippling.
Internationally, governments are starting to curb big tech’s grip on children’s attention. From this weekend, the Indonesian government is following Australia in mandating the deactivation of “high-risk” social media accounts belonging to children under 16. This month Brazil enacted an online safety law to protect children against compulsive use, and in the UK the prime minister, Keir Starmer, responded to the LA verdict saying: “We need to do more to protect children.” He cited a potential UK social media ban for under-16s and curbs on addictive features, such as infinite scrolling – the apparently bottomless supply of new material when a user reaches the end of their feed – and autoplay videos….
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