Jury holds YouTube and Meta responsible in addictive app lawsuit

Online services — and social media, in particular — are facing a bit of a reckoning right now. For years, concerned parents and activist groups alike have been sounding warning over apps that seem willfully designed to take advantage of our weak, human psyches, tempting us into endlessly scrolling through their bottomless wells of content — no matter what sort of negative consequence that has on our mental health. But now, the courts might be starting to do something about it, and this week a landmark jury verdict finds both YouTube and Meta negligent in their app designs.

All apps try their hardest to be compelling, but when’s the last time you couldn’t put down Google Docs for hours on end? Social platforms, on the other hand, use seemingly every trick in the book to keep us coming back for more, from insidious algorithms that appear to know what we want even before we do, to notifications leaving us with a perpetual sense of FOMO.

Back in 2023, a plaintiff going by her initials, K.G.M., filed suit against YouTube, Meta, Snap, and TikTok. After using these services from a young age, K.G.M. found herself suffering from body dysmorphia and experiencing thoughts of self-harm. The suit attempted to hold these companies accountable, accusing them of designing their apps to be as addictive as possible. Both TikTok and Snap settled out of court, but Meta and YouTube elected to take their chances at trial. This week, The New York Times reports that the jury has found in K.G.M.’s favor.

Lawyers argued that social media companies were aware of the risks their apps posed for developing minds, and specifically had internal discussions about their effect on children.

The verdict puts Meta and YouTube on the hook for $3 million in compensatory damages (with the bulk of that to be paid by Meta), but the jury’s still out (quite literally) on what punitive damages may be justified on top of that — and those could potentially dwarf that figure.

In a statement to Android Authority, a Google spokesperson says: “We disagree with the verdict and plan to appeal. This case misunderstands YouTube, which is a responsibly built streaming platform, not a social media site.”

While we wouldn’t be at all surprised to see things drag out in court significantly longer, especially as Google and Meta prepare those appeals, it feels like this verdict really helps put the writing up on the wall: People want to hold social media responsible. As more and more kids grow up surrounded by the mental pressure these apps exude, you had better believe that suits very similar to K.G.M.’s are going to start popping up all over the place.