A jury in Los Angeles, California, recently ruled that social media platforms cause harm to teenagers’ mental health and ordered Meta and YouTube to pay $6 million in damages in a social media addiction case.
The case was filed by a 20-year-old woman identified only as “Kelly.” She accused Meta, the owner of Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp, as well as Google, the parent company of YouTube, of intentionally designing addictive features.
The plaintiff stated that she began using YouTube at age 6 and Instagram at age 9, encountering no effective age restrictions during that time. She described spending excessive amounts of time on social media—at one point using Instagram for up to 16 hours a day—which led to a gradual decline in interaction with her family and the onset of anxiety and depression symptoms at age 10.
The jury ultimately ruled in favor of the plaintiff, ordering the two companies to pay a combined $6 million in damages, with Meta liable for approximately 70% of the damages and Google responsible for the remaining 30%. The jury found that both companies engaged in “malicious, oppressive, or fraudulent” conduct in the operation and design of their platforms.
Meta and Google both expressed disagreement with the verdict and plan to appeal. Meta emphasized that adolescent mental health issues are highly complex and should not be attributed to a single platform; Google, meanwhile, stated that YouTube is not a social media platform but a responsibly operated video platform.
Commentary:
This case highlights the ethical gaps in the entire social media business model. Platform features such as infinite scrolling, autoplay, notifications, and like counts are designed in ways that companies know can easily lead to prolonged addiction among adolescents, yet they continue to optimize algorithms to extend usage time.
Of course, users themselves also bear responsibility for managing their screen time. The problem, however, is that self-control—which is difficult even for adults—is even more so for children and adolescents. Establishing healthy media habits fundamentally requires the joint participation of family education, parental guidance, and social education. If tech companies claim to be responsible enterprises, they should not overlook this point but instead consider the psychological and developmental needs of underage users in their product design.