California Jury Finds Meta and Google Liable for Social Media Addiction in Landmark Case

A 12-member jury at the California Superior Court in Los Angeles ordered Meta and Google to pay a combined $6 million in damages to a 20-year-old woman identified as Kaley G.M., ruling that the companies deliberately designed addictive platforms that damaged her mental health from childhood. The jury found both companies negligent and determined they had acted with malice, coercion or deception in failing to warn users about the addictive risks of their platforms. Meta, the parent company of Instagram, must cover $4.8 million of the total award, while Google, whose parent company is Alphabet Inc., is liable for the remaining $1.2 million. The award comprises $3 million in compensatory damages and $3 million in punitive damages. Both companies announced their intention to appeal the verdict.

Plaintiff described 16-hour daily social media use from age six Kaley G.M., raised in Chico, California, told the court she began watching YouTube at age six and joined Instagram at age 11. She described using social media apps for up to 16 hours a day, a pattern she said led to depression and anxiety. As evidence, her legal team cited platform features including infinite scrolling, which presents an unending stream of content, as well as algorithmic feeds that tailor content to individual users to maximize engagement and advertising revenue. Her lawyers brought internal notes written by Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg and company executives to court, in which they discussed exploiting the vulnerability of young people to bind them to the platform. One memo cited in court stated that 11-year-olds were four times more likely to return to Instagram than to competing apps, despite the platform setting a minimum age of 13. According to La Repubblica, approximately four million users under 13 used Instagram in the United States in 2025. Mark Zuckerberg testified in the trial in February 2026, arguing that the safety of young users had always been a company priority.

16 (hours per day) — plaintiff's peak daily social media use as a child

Verdict seen as test case for over 2,000 pending lawsuits The ruling is widely regarded as a precedent for more than 2,000 similar lawsuits filed against social media companies including Meta Platforms, Google, Snapchat, and TikTok, all involving claims that the platforms caused addiction and mental health harm in minors. Lawyer Joseph VanZandt, who represents some of the affected families, said the verdict carried significance beyond the individual case. „This verdict is bigger than a single case. For years social media has profited by targeting children, while hiding the features that develop addiction in minors.” — Joseph VanZandt via La Repubblica Lawyer Mark Lanier, who represented Kaley G.M. at trial, spoke outside the courthouse in Los Angeles after the verdict was read. „We stand for something that is socially important and responsible — and I feel like we have made a great step forward.” — Mark Lanier via tagesschau.de Science and technology journalist Jakob Ward, speaking on CNN, described the ruling as the beginning of a new era in how courts assess the liability of technology companies for their effects on children's behavior.

Meta and Google reject verdict, cite lack of scientific consensus Meta spokeswoman Ashly Nikkole Davis rejected any direct link between platform use and teenage mental health problems. „The mental health of teenagers is incredibly complex and cannot be linked to a single app. We will continue to defend ourselves vigorously because every case is different.” — Ashly Nikkole Davis via tagesschau.de Google separately argued that YouTube does not qualify as a social media platform and also rejected the verdict. Both companies said they are evaluating their legal options. The nine days of jury deliberation and the scale of the punitive damages signal that courts are increasingly willing to scrutinize the design decisions made by technology platforms. The trial emerged against a backdrop of years of congressional inaction on comprehensive federal legislation governing social media safety for minors in the United States. With no such law in place, litigation has increasingly shifted to state courts and individual lawsuits. Meta had previously faced a separate legal action in New Mexico involving platform design and the safety of young users. The case against Meta and Google is among the first to reach a jury verdict in a wave of social media addiction litigation that legal observers have compared in scope to tobacco and opioid litigation of previous decades. If the damages in this single case were multiplied across the full pool of pending lawsuits, the total liability for the industry could reach into the billions of dollars, according to reporting by La Repubblica.