Technology Liability and Courts

After a month of testimony from addiction experts, therapists, engineers and executives including Mark Zuckerberg, a Los Angeles jury began hearing closing arguments Thursday in a bellwether lawsuit accusing Meta’s Instagram and Google-owned YouTube of addicting a girl to social media and worsening her depression and suicidal thoughts. The plaintiff, identified in court records as KGM or Kaley, now 20, alleges she was targeted as a vulnerable child user and that the platforms knowingly optimized features to keep her compulsively engaged even as she endured cyberbullying. Her attorney Mark Lanier urged jurors to see internal Meta and YouTube documents as proof the companies understood the potentially addictive nature of their products but failed to take adequate steps to protect minors, arguing that making money from children carries a duty to do so responsibly. Meta’s lawyers counter that Kaley faced serious mental-health and family challenges before joining social media, that her use was a coping mechanism, and that none of her therapists identified social media as the root cause, telling reporters the jury must decide whether her struggles would have existed without Instagram. Because this is one of three bellwether cases chosen from thousands of similar suits, its outcome will heavily influence settlement talks, trial strategies and potential financial exposure for the major platforms in ongoing litigation over youth mental-health harms tied to social media design.