• by Wendy Davis , Yesterday

A jury in Los Angeles on Wednesday found Google's YouTube and Meta Platforms liable for harming a young woman's mental health by designing their services to be addictive.

The jury assessed the woman's damages at $3 million, and said Meta should pay 70% of that figure and Google should pay 30%.

Later Wednesday afternoon, the jurors determined that the companies should also pay $3 million in punitive damages. 

The verdict came one day after a separate jury in New Mexico found Meta liable for violating that state's consumer protection law and ordered it to pay $375 million.

A Google spokesperson said the company disagrees with the Los Angeles verdict and plans to appeal.

"This case misunderstands YouTube, which is a responsibly built streaming platform, not a social media site," spokesperson Jose Castañeda stated.

A Meta spokesperson likewise said the company disagrees with the verdict, adding that it's evaluating legal options. Meta also noted that the jury verdict was not unanimous. 

Ten jurors out of 12 reportedly voted to hold the tech companies liable, but California law only requires nine jurors to agree on a verdict in a civil suit.

Wednesday's verdict came in a lawsuit by a now 20-year-old woman identified in court papers as K.G.M. who alleged that she suffered psychological injuries including depression and anxiety as a result of addiction to social media.

K.G.M. is one of thousands of people across the country suing tech companies for allegedly designing their social platforms to addict young people, and then serving them with potentially harmful content.

State attorneys general, school districts and local cities are also suing the tech platforms over similar claims.

K.G.M.'s case is one of three test cases regarding social platforms' liability for allegedly addicting young people. The other two cases are expected to go to trial in Los Angeles this summer.

K.G.M.'s complaint also named TikTok and Snap as defendants, but those companies settled with her shortly before trial.

Wednesday's verdict came after a trial at which Google and Meta executives, including CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Instagram head Adam Mosseri, testified.

YouTube and Meta had argued that the case should be dismissed before trial for several reasons, including that the First Amendment protects publishers' ability to carry lawful speech -- even if it's objectionable -- and that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act protects web companies from liability for content posted by users.

Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Carolyn Kuhl repeatedly rejected those arguments, ruling that Section 230 and the First Amendment don't immunize companies from decisions relating to the design features such as "infinite scroll" -- which continuously serves users with new content.

Meta specifically argued that it couldn't be liable for "infinite scroll" because that feature only led K.G.M. to watch content, and it was immune from liability for content.

But Kuhl disagreed, writing that there was evidence "suggesting that the design feature of 'infinite scroll' itself harmed K.G.M."

That evidence meant there was a factual question for a jury about whether the claims were based on Meta's design, or on third-party content, she added.

This week's verdicts indicate that "juries are willing to impose major liability on social media providers based on claims of social media addiction," Santa Clara University law professor Eric Goldman said Wednesday in a written statement.

He added that this liability "jeopardizes the entire social media industry."

At the same time, he stated that the companies "have several good grounds for an appeal," including questions about how the First Amendment and Section 230 apply to the claims.

Goldman added that the jury verdicts, combined with new and proposed legislation that would impose restrictions on social platforms, means "the social media industry faces existential legal liability and inevitably will need to reconfigure their core offerings if they can't get broad-based relief on appeal."

He tells MediaPost that it's not yet clear what changes social platforms could make that would protect them in the future.

"If the fundamental proposition is that engaging users equals addicting them, then everything that encourages engagement could be a potential basis of liability," he says.

Former Federal Trade Commissioner Alvaro Bedoya, who was ousted by President Trump last year, said in a post on X that the verdict "is a stark warning to AI chatbot companies like OpenAI, Character AI and Meta itself."

Bedoya noted that all three companies have been criticized over chatbot interactions with young users, and have "largely not addressed" that criticism.