Meta and YouTube Found Negligent in Landmark Social Media Addiction Case; The New York Times, March 25, 2026

Cecilia Kang, Ryan Mac and Eli Tan, The New York Times ; Meta and YouTube Found Negligent in Landmark Social Media Addiction Case

A jury found the companies negligent in their app designs, harming a young user with design features that were addictive and led to her mental health distress.

"The social media company Meta and the video streaming service YouTube harmed a young user with design features that were addictive and led to her mental health distress, a jury found on Wednesday, a landmark decision that could open social media companies to more lawsuits over users’ well-being.

Meta and YouTube must pay $3 million in compensatory damages for pain and suffering and other financial burdens. Meta is responsible for 70 percent of that cost and YouTube for the remainder.

The bellwether case, which was brought by a now 20-year-old woman identified as K.G.M., had accused social media companies of creating products as addictive as cigarettes or digital casinos. K.G.M. sued Meta, which owns Instagram and Facebook, and Google’s YouTube over features like infinite scroll and algorithmic recommendations that she claimed led to anxiety and depression.

The jury of seven women and five men will deliberate further to decide what punitive damages the companies should pay for malice or fraud."

Social Media Isn’t Just Speech. It’s Also a Defective, Hazardous Product.; The New York Times, March 14, 2026

Tim Wu, The New York Times ; Social Media Isn’t Just Speech. It’s Also a Defective, Hazardous Product.

"For two decades now, social media companies have been virtually untouchable, profitably floating above accusations that they normalize propaganda, addict children and degrade our character. Legally and politically, platforms like Facebook, Instagram and YouTube have been protected by an idea that they and others have promoted: that they are not just innovative technologies but also speech platforms, so that imposing any limits on them would amount to both censorship and a drag on technological progress.

That protection is finally starting to weaken, thanks to a growing realization that social media is also a matter of public health. Seen this way, social media appears as something less newfangled and more familiar: a defective, hazardous product. The current trial of Meta’s Instagram and Google’s YouTube in Los Angeles Superior Court, in which a 20-year-old woman has accused the platforms of designing their products in ways that harmed her mental and physical health, is the clearest sign of this shift.

The case, in which closing arguments were made on Thursday, is the first of many lawsuits brought by thousands of young people, school districts and state attorneys general against companies like Meta, Google, Snap and TikTok. The plaintiffs in these cases do not accuse the companies merely of serving up bad content to young people; they argue that the very design of social media is intentionally engineered to create compulsions and habits of overuse, regardless of the content provided."

Social Media Giants Face Landmark Legal Tests on Child Safety; The New York Times, January 27, 2026

Cecilia Kang, The New York Times ; Social Media Giants Face Landmark Legal Tests on Child Safety

"Are social media apps addictive like cigarettes? Are these sites defective products?

Those are the claims that Meta, Snap, TikTok and YouTube will face this year in a series of landmark trials. Teenagers, school districts and states have filed thousands of lawsuits accusing the social media titans of designing platforms that encouraged excessive use by millions of young Americans, leading to personal injury and other harms.

On Tuesday, the first of these bellwether cases is scheduled to start with jury selection in California Superior Court of Los Angeles County. A now-20-year-old Californian identified by the initials K.G.M. filed the lawsuit in 2023, claiming she became addicted to the social media sites as a child and experienced anxiety, depression and body-image issues as a result.

The cases pose one of the most significant legal threats to Meta, Snap, TikTok and YouTube, potentially opening them up to new liabilities for users’ well-being. Drawing inspiration from a legal playbook used against Big Tobacco last century, lawyers plan to use the argument that the companies created addictive products.

A win could open the door to more lawsuits from millions of social media users. It could also lead to huge monetary damages and changes to social media sites’ designs."