A jury in Los Angeles has decided that Meta and YouTube were negligent and failed to warn after designing features that a young user says hooked her and harmed her mental health. The jury awarded the plaintiffs $3 million in compensatory damages. Punitive damages will be determined in the next phase of the trial.

The trial in a nutshell

The case ran for six weeks in Los Angeles superior court and ended with nearly nine days of jury deliberation. It is the first trial of its kind to go all the way to a verdict. During the trial the jury heard from company executives, whistleblowers, addiction and social media experts, and the woman at the center of the case, who used the initials KGM in court proceedings.

The person at the center

KGM, now 20, told the court she became addicted to YouTube at age six and to Instagram at age nine. She says that by age 10 she was depressed and engaging in self-harm. Her social media use, she testified, strained family relationships and affected her school life. At 13 she was diagnosed with body dysmorphic disorder and social phobia, which she attributes to her time on those platforms.

Lawyers' framing

Mark Lanier, who represented KGM, summed up the argument this way: "How do you make a child never put down the phone? That’s called the engineering of addiction. They engineered it, they put these features on the phones." Her legal team argues that her experience reflects what thousands of other young people have gone through.

KGM's lawyers called the verdict historic and said it belonged to her and the many families waiting for accountability. The plaintiffs compared the case to past litigation against tobacco companies, pointing to design choices like endlessly scrollable feeds and autoplay video as features intended to keep users engaged.

How the companies reacted

  • YouTube has said the allegations are not true and that developing safer experiences for young people has long been a focus of its work. A spokesperson disputed the claims heard at trial.
  • Meta said it disagrees with the verdict and is evaluating legal options. In earlier statements Meta pointed out that KGM's medical records show serious family and psychiatric issues, and that those factors were separate from social media use.

Why this verdict matters

This decision follows another recent ruling, in New Mexico, where a jury ordered Meta to pay $375 million in civil penalties after finding the company had misled consumers about platform safety and enabled harm. The back-to-back outcomes mark the first time juries have found Meta liable or negligent for harms linked to its platforms.

The California case is part of a larger set of consolidated suits against multiple social platforms filed on behalf of more than 1,600 plaintiffs, including families and school districts. TikTok and Snap settled the particular lawsuit involving KGM before trial.

KGM’s case is the first of over 20 so-called bellwether trials that will test how juries react and possibly set legal precedent. The next bellwether trial is scheduled for July. Separately, a series of federal lawsuits involving hundreds of plaintiffs is set to begin in San Francisco in June.

The jury’s findings do not end the legal fights. Appeals, additional trials, and more verdicts are likely as these cases move forward.