Jury Finds Meta and Google Negligent in Landmark Social Media Addiction Trial

A Los Angeles jury has found Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta and Google’s YouTube liable in a groundbreaking lawsuit concerning harm to children using their platforms, awarding $3 million in damages to a young woman who claims social media addiction during childhood worsened her mental health.

NBC News reports that in a precedent-setting verdict, jurors in the high profile social media addiction trial deliberated for more than 40 hours across nine days before determining that both Meta and YouTube were negligent in the design and operation of their platforms. The jury concluded that each company’s negligence was a substantial factor in causing harm to the plaintiff, a 20-year-old woman who testified that her childhood use of social media created an addiction to the technology and aggravated her mental health problems.

The multimillion-dollar award is expected to increase significantly, as jurors determined that the companies acted with malice or highly egregious