‘IG is a drug’: jury to deliberate as US trial over social media addiction wraps up | Technology

The first jury trial into the potential harms of social media ended Thursday. While Meta and YouTube’s lawyers argue that their platforms are safe for the majority of young people, lawyers for a young woman at the center of the case say that technology companies design their products to create addiction, which causes mental health problems in children and teenagers.

“How did they become so giant?” Plaintiffs’ attorney Mark Lanier said during closing arguments in Los Angeles Superior Court on Thursday. According to NBC. “This is the attention economy. They make money by getting your attention.”

The six-week trial witnessed a parade of high-profile witnesses, including Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Instagram head Adam Mosseri and YouTube vice president of engineering Cristos Goodrow. Jurors also heard testimony from the 20-year-old lead plaintiff, who goes by the initials KGM, his therapist, whistleblowers and witnesses who are experts on social media and addiction.

If jurors rule in favor of KGM, social media companies could face hefty financial penalties; Plaintiffs’ lawyers hope it will lead these companies to change fundamental aspects of how their platforms operate. In this case, the burden of proof belongs to the plaintiffs. The jury will need to find YouTube and Meta’s negligence and causation before awarding damages, so the outcome of the trial could play out a few different ways. The talks are planned to start on Friday.

KGM said that he has been connected to YouTube since the age of six and to Instagram since the age of nine. He said that when he turned 10, he became depressed and as a result started to harm himself. He stated that his social media usage cycle caused strained relationships with his family and at school. She said she had suicidal thoughts and began cutting herself as a “coping mechanism for my depression.” At age 13, KGM’s therapist diagnosed her with body dysmorphic disorder and social phobia; KGM attributed this to his use of Instagram and YouTube.

KGM’s lawyers say his experience is emblematic of what tens of thousands of young people face on social media and in their offline lives.

Meta and YouTube deny this mistake. YouTube spokesman José Castañeda called the allegations in the lawsuits “absolutely untrue” and said that providing young people “a safer, healthier experience has always been at the core of our business.”

A Meta spokesperson said in a statement that KGM’s mental health issues stemmed from her difficult home life, which was a key argument in the company’s lawsuit, adding that “she has faced profound challenges and we are aware of everything she has endured. But the jury’s sole duty is to decide whether these struggles would exist without Instagram.”

This lawsuit is the first in a group of consolidated lawsuits filed against Meta, TikTok, YouTube and Snap on behalf of more than 1,600 plaintiffs, including more than 350 families and 250 school districts. TikTok and Snap settled the FGM case just before trial.

KGM’s case is also the first of more than 20 “pioneer” cases planned to be presented to the court over the next few years and used to gauge the reaction of juries as well as to set legal precedent. . The next major case is scheduled to be heard in July.

Online safety advocates, parents and plaintiff’s attorneys say they’ve already won, no matter how the jury decides.

“When we started suing social media companies four years ago, no one thought we would get to this point,” said founder Matthew Bergman. Social Media Victims Law Center and an attorney representing the plaintiffs.

“Whether you win or lose the outcome of this case, victims in the United States have won because we now know that social media companies can and will be held accountable before a fair and impartial jury.”

What emerged at the hearing

KGM’s lawyers claim that some of the features that social media companies have built into their platforms, such as infinitely scrollable feeds and automatic video playback, are designed to keep people on the apps and create addiction. Advocates also argue that “like” buttons feed teens’ desire for approval, and features like beauty filters can distort teens’ self-image.

During KGM’s hearing, numerous previously sealed documents came to light showing that some employees at Instagram and YouTube found these platforms either addictive or ineffective in their efforts to protect the well-being of young people.

An internal YouTube document from 2021 asks the question: “How do we measure health?” and adds the answer, “We are not.” Another document details how children under 13 are the fastest-growing internet audience in the world, with YouTube offering the opportunity to digitally babysit eight-year-olds. One document reads: “[The] The goal is not the audience, but audience addiction.”

Documents at Meta show that some employees questioned the company’s leadership in targeting younger audiences. In a 2017 email, an employee writes to a colleague: “Oh, good, now we’re going after <13 year olds?"

The colleague responded, “Zuck has been talking about this for a while,” prompting the first employee to say, “yeah, the last time he talked about it, it was disgusting.”

A separate email conversation between Meta employees in 2020 shows one person saying “oh my god, IG is a drug.” A colleague replies: “Hahaha, I mean all social media. We’re actually repulsive.”

The dialogue continues with employees comparing the appeal of social media to gambling and how “reward tolerance” has become so high that people “can no longer feel rewards.” The conversation ends with an employee saying: “That’s a little scary.”

During the hearing, lawyers for Meta and YouTube denied that their platforms were addictive. YouTube’s consultant pointed to parental controls and internal statistics that show the average person’s use of the video streaming platform typically takes less than 30 minutes per day. Goodrow said in his statement that YouTube was “not designed to maximize time.”

Meta focused her arguments on FGM and her therapist’s statement, and said her problems had little to do with social media. Lawyers cited medical records that included quotes from KGM saying that when he was 13, his mother was fat-shamed and yelled at him. Lawyers claimed the harassment led to the young woman’s mental health problems.

“His records show significant emotional and physical abuse, academic struggles and psychiatric conditions, separate from social media use,” a Meta spokesperson said. “The evidence does not support reducing life-long difficulties to a single factor, and our case will continue to underscore this fact.”

KGM still lives with his mother, who was present throughout the hearing. During her deposition, KGM disputed information lawyers cited from her medical records about her youth, saying her mother “wasn’t perfect, but she was trying to do the best she could… I don’t think I would call it abuse or neglect or anything like that.”

Meta also disputed the idea of ​​addiction, saying that FGM has never received this official diagnosis. When Mosseri took his stand, he pushed the issue further by pushing back on the science behind social media addiction, denying that users could be “clinically addicted.” Psychologists do not classify social media addiction as a formal diagnosis, but researchers have documented the harmful consequences of compulsive use among teens.

During closing arguments, Lanier compared Instagram’s endless scrolling and YouTube’s autoplay to getting free tortilla chips at a restaurant and not being able to stop eating them, according to NBC. Other features, such as notifications from friends and “likes,” add to the addictive nature of the platforms, he said.

“How do you ensure that a child never gives up the phone? This is called addiction engineering. They designed this, they put these features on the phones,” Lanier said. “These are Trojan horses: they look great and magnificent… but when you invite them in, they take over.”

KGM lawyers’ arguments echo those made against big tobacco in the 1990s, which focused on the addictive properties of cigarettes and which the companies knew about the harms of their products but publicly denied for decades. Online safety advocates and parents say Meta refuses to look at the impact on teens and instead uses the “blame the victim” tactic.

“They’re really drawing from big tobacco’s playbook. Blame the victim, blame the parents, blame the child, blame everyone except the products they designed,” said Sacha Haworth, executive director of the Tech Oversight Project, which has done advocacy work on behalf of the plaintiffs.

“These are the most profitable companies in the history of the world. They can make these changes if they want. But instead of doing that, they attack the victims.”