The landmark decision finds that Instagram, YouTube were designed to be addicting children

After seven weeks of court proceedings and more than 40 hours of heated arguments over nine days in one of the nation’s most watched civil cases, jurors handed down a landmark ruling in Los Angeles Superior Court on Wednesday, finding Instagram and YouTube to blame for the suffering of a Chico woman who charged the platforms were designed for young addicted users.

Kaley GM, the 20-year-old plaintiff, arrived in court shortly before 10 a.m. wearing the same rose-colored dress she had worn to testify in February. He remained steadfast as the sentence, the $3 million award and the award of additional damages were read. His friend fought back tears, his chin shaking. Many observers wept silently despite repeated warnings from Judge Carolyn B. Kuhl not to respond.

“We don’t have to respond to the judge’s decision – no crying, reaction, and disruption,” Kuhl warned. “If there is, we will have to take it to court, and we don’t want to do that.”

Less than two hours after issuing their initial verdict, the jury returned to award $2.1 million in punitive damages against Meta and $900,000 against Google, bringing the total verdict against the companies to $6 million combined.

Attorneys for Snapchat and TikTok also appeared in court Wednesday morning to hear the ruling. The two parties settled with Kaley out of court for an undisclosed amount before the lawsuit.

“We respectfully disagree with the decision and are evaluating our legal options,” said a spokesperson for Instagram’s parent company, Meta.

The decision came less than 24 hours after a New Mexico judge found Meta liable for $375 million in damages related to Atty. The claim of Gen. Raúl Torres turned Instagram into a “breeding site” for child predators—a decision the platform promised to appeal.

The Los Angeles judge took a long time to deliberate. On Friday, the jurors were on their pizza lunch break to ask Kuhl if they should all share in damages, or only those who agreed on liability. On Monday, they told Kuhl they were having trouble agreeing on one of the defendants.

Kuhl told the judge to keep trying.

Kaley said she got into YouTube and Instagram in grade school. Jurors are charged with deciding whether companies were negligent in designing their products and failed to warn of the dangers.

Their decision will join thousands of other pending cases, reshaping the legal landscape of the world’s most powerful corporations. Experts say the payment will likely put a cap on future awards.

It comes on the heels of a Delaware court ruling that clears Meta’s insurer of liability for damages in “several thousand lawsuits related to injuries caused by its platforms” – a decision that could leave it and other tech professionals at risk of unknown millions for the future.

Until this case, which began in late January, no case seeking to hold the tech titans responsible for harming children had ever reached a jury. Many are now to follow.

Kaley’s test case was chosen from among the many cases currently being consolidated in California state court. Hundreds more are joining the government program, with the first trial scheduled for June in San Francisco.

Together, the suits seek to prove that the damages did not arise from user content but from the design and functionality of the platforms themselves.

That’s an important legal distinction, experts say. Social media companies have until now been protected by a powerful 1996 law called Section 230, which shielded apps from liability for what happens to children who use them.

Lawyers for Meta and Google argued that Kaley’s difficulties were the result of her troubled home life and the outbreak of the COVID pandemic, not social media.

Plaintiffs’ attorney Mark Lanier speaks to the media in Los Angeles Superior Court on Tuesday.

(Kayla Bartkowski/Los Angeles Times)

“I don’t think it should have been tried by a jury,” said Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the UC Berkeley School of Law and an expert on the 1st Amendment, who also defends the platforms. “All the media are trying to keep people watching [their platform] and I’m coming back.”

Some say that social media’s algorithmic ability to capture, cultivate and control attention makes it very different from teen-friendly romance novels, Marvel movies or first-person shooters.

“These are really difficult and sad cases,” said Eric J. Segall, a professor at Georgia State College of Law. “They represent a conflict between the principles of free speech and the real harm caused by protecting those companies that engage in the expansion of free speech for profit.”

“Letting jurors sort this all out without further guidance is tempting but also dangerous,” she said.

As the hearings that began on March 13 continued, the judges expressed similar doubts, asking to see Meta’s internal documents, and reviewing the testimony of defense experts “regarding his professional integrity; being the only doctor who said social media was not a factor in KGM’s mental health.”

They appeared to agree on Meta’s guilt on Friday, but worked on Tuesday to speed up Google’s decision, issuing their decision just after 10 a.m. Wednesday.

“Today, the jury found the truth and held Meta and Google guilty of designing products that are addictive and harmful to children,” said Lexi Hazam, a court-appointed attorney for the plaintiffs in a related government action. “This decision sends an unmistakable message that no company can be held accountable.”

The result is likely to change the already heated debate about social media addiction as a concept, what role apps play in developing them, and whether people like Kaley can prove they have suffered.

Advocates of the platforms want to cast doubt on the disease – insisting that there is no official diagnosis of social media addiction – while arguing that Kaley has never been treated for it.

“Substitute the word ‘YouTube’ for the word methamphetamine,” attorney Luis Li urged jurors during closing arguments Thursday. “Ask yourself from your lifetime experience if there is anyone with an addiction problem who would say, ‘Yeah, I just lost interest.’

“He was sitting there for hours without being on his phone,” said Meta’s attorney Paul W. Schmidt.

The YouTube team also wanted to differentiate the video sharing app from Instagram and other social networks, saying that their functions are very different.

Kaley’s team called it the “gateway” to her social media addiction.

“YouTube was not a gateway to anything,” said Li. “YouTube was a toy that a child loved and put down.”

The judges didn’t agree, and ended up holding the court as guilty, although they split the bill 70-30, heavily weighted towards Meta.

Lanier leaned on his Texas slavery during the trial, telling the judge what was on his mind and writing in grease pencil on his display case. In his direct address to the judge, he used a collection of children’s wooden poles, stacks of papers, even a hammer and an egg carton.

During the hearing Wednesday morning, he pulled out a glass jar filled with 415 peanut M&Ms to represent the $415 billion net worth that Google’s parent company, Alphabet, estimated in December.

“What are you going to fine them for this?” he investigated. “Are you going to fine them a billion?” He placed a green M&M on top of the pile. “Two billion?” He took out another one. “You know a pack of M&Ms has 18 M&Ms? You fine them a billion, and they won’t see it.”

“The last thing in the world they want you to do is talk about how many M&Ms they have,” the lawyer said, urging the jury to “talk to Meta about Meta’s money.”

“The last thing in the world they want you to do is focus on what it takes to hold them accountable for what they did,” said Lanier.

In contrast, technical teams rely on digital presentations to review evidence and illustrate their arguments.

“Focus on the facts at issue in this case,” Schmidt urged the judge during closing. “Not lawyers’ arguments, not paraphernalia like a glass of water or a jar of M&Ms, but real evidence.”

During the sentencing phase of the trial, he wanted to emphasize that there was “no intent to harm” children, and that it had worked diligently to make its products safer.

The case was the first to get Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg on the witness stand, where he defended Instagram’s security record and lamented the difficulty of keeping teenagers out of the app.

It also made public tens of thousands of pages of internal documents – documents that Lanier said show companies deliberately targeting children, and building their products to last longer on the market.

“These are the internal documents that you saw specifically because you are the judge who should sit in this case,” Lanier told the judge during closing arguments on Thursday. “It’s given exposure that the world has never had.”

Those previously undisclosed items may be critical to the judge’s final decision, experts say.

“The internal emails here were important — they painted a picture of Meta’s negligence,” said Joseph McNally, a former Acting U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California and an expert in “technology-related injuries.”

The tech titans have already vowed to appeal both the California and New Mexico rulings, all but guaranteeing that the issue will ultimately be decided by the Supreme Court, experts say.