Woman Awarded Rp 100 Billion in Damages from Meta and YouTube Over Social Media Addiction

A jury panel in a Los Angeles court has ruled in favour of a woman’s lawsuit against Meta and YouTube regarding her social media addiction experienced during her childhood.

The jury found that Meta, which owns Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp, and Google, the owner of YouTube, deliberately built addictive social media platforms that harmed the mental health of the 20-year-old woman.

The woman, known as Kaley, was awarded damages of US$6 million (Rp 100 billion). This verdict is expected to impact hundreds of similar cases currently being processed in US courts.

Meta and Google separately stated that they disagree with the decision and will appeal.

Meta said: “Adolescent mental health is highly complex and cannot be attributed to a single app. We will continue to vigorously defend ourselves because each case is different, and we remain confident in our track record of protecting teenagers online.”

A Google spokesperson said: “This case misrepresents YouTube, which is a responsibly built streaming platform, not a social media site.”

The jury decided that Kaley should receive US$3 million in compensatory damages and an additional US$3 million because they deemed Meta and Google to have “acted with malice, oppression, or fraud” in the way they operated their platforms.

Meta is expected to bear 70% of Kaley’s total damages, while Google will bear the remaining 30%.

Parents of other children, who are not part of Kaley’s lawsuit but claim to have been harmed by social media, gathered outside the courthouse on Wednesday (25/03), as they did throughout the five-week trial.

When the verdict was announced, parents like Amy Neville were seen celebrating and hugging other parents and supporters who had been awaiting the decision.

The ruling comes a day after a jury panel in the state of New Mexico held Meta responsible for the way its platform endangered children and exposed them to explicit sexual material as well as contact with sexual offenders.

Mike Proulx, research director at Forrester, said that these two consecutive rulings mark a “turning point” between social media companies and the public.

In recent months, countries like Australia have implemented restrictions for children to stop or limit social media use.

The UK is currently running a pilot programme to see how a social media ban for those under 16 can be implemented.

“Negative sentiment towards social media has been building for years, and it is now finally peaking,” said Proulx.

When appearing before the jury in February, Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s CEO and executive director, relied on the company’s long-standing policy prohibiting users under 13 from using its platforms.

When shown internal research and documents indicating that Meta actually knew children were using its platforms, Zuckerberg said he “always hoped” for faster progress in identifying users under 13.

He insisted that the company has reached “the right place over time.”

While Google, as the owner of YouTube, was also a defendant in the case, much of the trial focused on Instagram and Meta.

Snap and TikTok were initially also defendants, but both companies reached confidential settlements with Kaley before the trial began.

Meanwhile, Kaley’s lawyers argued that Meta and YouTube built an “addiction machine” and failed to meet their responsibility to prevent children from accessing the platforms.

Kaley said she started using Instagram at age nine and YouTube at age six, and never encountered any efforts to block her due to her age.

“I stopped interacting with my family because I spent all my time on social media,” Kaley said in her testimony.

Kaley said she was 10 years old when she began experiencing anxiety and depressive disorders, which were later diagnosed by a therapist a few years afterwards.

She also became obsessed with her physical appearance and used Instagram filters that altered her face, making her nose smaller and her eyes larger, almost from the time she started using the platform as a child.

Kaley has since been diagnosed with body dysmorphic disorder, a condition that causes a person to be overly concerned about their physical appearance and unable to see themselves as others do.

Kaley’s lawyers argued that Instagram features like endless scrolling were designed to be addictive.

Meta’s growth objectives aimed at getting young people to use its platform, Kaley’s lawyers said.

Using testimony from experts and former Meta executives, they argued that the company wanted young users because they are more likely to stick with the platform for longer periods.

When Kaley’s lawyers told Adam Mosseri, head of Instagram, that Kaley’s longest daily usage was 16 hours, he denied that it was evidence of addiction.

Instead, he described a teenager spending most of the day on Instagram as “problematic.”

Kaley’s lawyers said on Wednesday that the jury’s verdict “sends an unmistakable message that no company”