What Meta and Google’s guilty verdict in social media harms trial means to users

2026-03-26 - 08:51

MANILA, Philippines – The jury at the Los Angeles trial on social media harms found the defendants Meta and Google guilty, Wednesday, March 25, US time, for harming young users by deliberately building their platforms Facebook and YouTube with addictive design features. Court documents revealed that executives have knowledge of the addictiveness of their platforms, and did not protect their young users, nor did they put up sufficient warnings, thus leading to harm, the jury decided. Quick recap The decision comes after a series of court hearings in February and March 2026. Meta internal documents revealed the company saying: “If we wanna win big with teens, we must bring them in as tweens.” Another document said: “Oh my gosh yall IG is a drug... Lol, I mean, all social media. We’re basically pushers.” Mark Lanier, the lawyer for plaintiff “Kaley G.M.” said YouTube took advantage of busy parents, framing the platform as a “digital babysitting service.” Kaley G.M., now 20 years old, in her own testimony said she started using YouTube at 6 years old. She said, “I spent all my time on it. I would sneak it. I would watch it in class. Every time I set limits for myself, it didn’t work. I just couldn’t get off.” She was able to secretly create an Instagram account at 9 years old, and said she was on the platform every day, looking at it when she woke up in the morning, right after school, and late at night. When she watched videos, fed in an endless stream, she said she always wanted to see what the next one was, having once spent 16 hours on the platform in one day. Meta’s lawyers attempted to portray Kaley as someone who had a tough family life, and argued that Kaley’s psychiatrist testified that the child also experienced bullying in school. Their defense was to show that the psychological makeup of the plaintiff was a complex case that arose from factors other than social media use. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg denied that he ordered the Instagram team to maximize time spent on the app. Zuckerberg also said it is difficult to verify user age, and that the responsibility of doing so should be on the makers of mobile devices — which fully echoes the company’s current lobbying efforts to place the responsibility of age verification on app store owners and device makers rather than on the social media platform. For the jury to come to its decision, the 12-person panel was asked if the companies were negligent in causing harm to Kaley, and if they believed the tech companies knew that the design of their products was dangerous. For these two questions, a majority of 10 jurors answered in favor of the plaintiff, The Guardian reported. Meta and Google are expected to appeal the decision. LANIER. Lawyer Mark Lanier, of the plaintiff Kaley G.M., speaks with the media outside the court after the jury found Meta and Google liable in a key test case accusing Meta and Google’s YouTube of harming children’s mental health through addictive social media platforms, in Los Angeles, California, US, March 25, 2026. Photo by Mike Blake/Reuters The importance of the decision The total $6 million in damages awarded, with 70% shouldered by Meta, and the remaining by Google, is a grain of sand for the trillion-dollar companies. But the real significance of the case is that the decision marks the first time that there is a court record verifying that the very architecture of these online platforms can be very harmful. For the first time, a case has been able to succeed against what has been tech companies’ shield: Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which puts accountability on the user making a post on a platform, rather than the platform itself. The case was able to sidestep that by focusing on social media design features such as the content delivery algorithm, the infinite scroll mechanism, constant notifications, autoplaying videos, and social media filter effects. The case was thus able to pin the accountability on the platform owner. Will it immediately have social media platforms removing such designs? No. As the NPR reports, “the lawyers involved in the cases against the tech giants view the Los Angeles verdict as a promising early sign that the dam is breaking in favor of industry-wide changes.” For those pushing for change, the verdict is the start, a very positive development. In many other countries attempting to regulate social media, including the Philippines where social media platforms are pushing for an “age-appropriate framework” while some legislators are pushing for an all-out ban for minors, the decision should also provide key findings that will help inform future legislation. Given there is established harm, arising from the very design features of these platforms, what would be the sharpest measures to counteract the negative effects of these? And while Meta and Google were the defendants in the case, two other platforms, TikTok and Snap, were originally part of it before doing a settlement with Kaley G.M. TikTok and Snap — with the former being more popular in the Philippines — share similar design features as Facebook and YouTube that had been deemed addictive in the trial. The win also presents a framework for future similar cases. Matt Bergman of the Social Media Victims Law Center, quoted by NBC, said the decision “establishes a framework for how similar cases across the country will be evaluated and demonstrates that juries are willing to hold technology companies accountable when the evidence shows foreseeable harm... Families pursuing justice in other jurisdictions can now point to this outcome as proof that these claims deserve to be heard and taken seriously.” “How do you make a child never put down the phone? That’s called the engineering of addiction,” Lanier had also said at the trial. For parents, the decision is further proof of the harms that social media may cause their children. Must Read Against oppressive algorithms, addictive design, parents can’t always keep up What’s next? Meta, Google, and also TikTok and Snap are facing many similar cases. The Kaley G.M. case is a test “bellwether” case. Politico reports there are “hundreds similar cases brought by more than 1,600 plaintiffs ranging from California school districts that blame platforms for rampant student mental health issues to families who accuse social media platforms of harming their kids.” Some of these are expected to go to trial this year. Meanwhile, at the federal level in the US, there are an additional 235 plaintiffs also suing Meta, Snap, TikTok and Google in similar cases, with the first of these trials expected to begin as soon as this June, Politico also reports. These put more pressure on the social media companies — pressure that could potentially lead to changes that would address the harms caused. Axios reported, Meta president Dina Powell McCormick said at Axios’ AI+DC Summit that they “respectfully disagree with that decision and we’re appealing.” She added, “It’s something that we’re going to keep working hard [on], and try to protect young people on our platform.” The Tech Oversight Project’s executive director, Sacha Haworth, said, “The era of Big Tech invincibility is over – this ruling is an earthquake that shakes Big Tech’s predatory business model to its core... This trial was proof that if you put CEOs like Mark Zuckerberg on the stand before a judge and jury of their peers, the tech industry’s wanton disregard for people will be on full display.” – Rappler.com