Landmark trial accusing social media companies of addicting children to their platforms begins

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The world’s largest social media companies have faced a spate of landmark lawsuits this year aimed at holding them accountable for harm done to children who use their platforms. Opening statements for the first trial in Los Angeles County Superior Court began Monday.

Instagram’s parent company Meta and Google’s YouTube will face allegations that their platforms are deliberately addicting and harming children. TikTok and Snap, which were originally mentioned in the lawsuit, Agreement reached for undisclosed sums.

“This was just the first case; there are hundreds of parents and school districts in social media addiction lawsuits starting today, and unfortunately every day new families are speaking out and taking Big Tech to court for their intentionally harmful products,” said Sacha Haworth, executive director of the nonprofit Tech Oversight Project.

a separate Trial in New MexicoMeanwhile, it was to begin with opening arguments on Monday.

At the center of the Los Angeles case is a 19-year-old identified only by the initials “KGM”; This person’s case could determine how thousands of similar lawsuits against social media companies play out. Clay Calvert, a senior nonresident fellow in technology policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, said he and two other plaintiffs were chosen for lead trials, essentially test cases to see how each side’s arguments would play out in front of a jury and what, if any, damages could be awarded.

This will be the first time the companies will argue their cases in front of a jury, and the outcome could profoundly impact how companies handle children using their businesses and platforms.

Jurors entered the courtroom at 9:50 a.m. and received a long list of instructions from Judge Carolyn B. Kuhl before hearing opening statements.

Jurors are not being asked to stop using Facebook, Instagram, YouTube or other forms of social media during the trial, which is expected to last about eight weeks, but Kuhl emphasized that they should not make any changes to how they interact with the platforms, including changing their settings or creating new accounts.

Kuhl said jurors must exercise their judgment independently when deciding Meta and YouTube’s liability.

KGM claims that his use of social media from a young age made him addicted to technology and increased his depression and suicidal thoughts. More importantly, the lawsuit alleges that this was done through deliberate design choices by companies trying to make their platforms more addictive to children in order to increase their profits. This argument, if successful, would allow companies to bypass the First Amendment shield and Chapter 230This protects tech companies from liability for material published on their platforms.

“Drawing heavily on behavioral and neurobiological techniques used by war machines and exploited by the cigarette industry, Defendants deliberately incorporated into their products a number of design features intended to maximize youth engagement in order to increase advertising revenue,” the lawsuit says.

Executives, including Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, are expected to testify at the hearing, which will last six to eight weeks. Experts found similarities with the Big Tobacco cases that led to a 1998 settlement requiring cigarette companies to pay billions of dollars in health care costs and restrict marketing targeting minors.

“Plaintiffs are not merely collateral damage to Defendants’ products,” the lawsuit states. “They are direct victims of intentional product design choices made by each Defendant. They are the intended targets of harmful features that push them into destructive feedback loops.”

Tech companies dispute allegations that their products intentionally harm children and argue that they are not responsible for content posted on their sites by third parties, citing numerous safeguards they have added over the years.

“Recently, there have been a number of lawsuits attempting to place the blame for young people’s mental health struggles squarely on social media companies,” Meta said in a recent blog post. “But this oversimplifies a serious problem. Clinicians and researchers find that mental health is an extremely complex and multifaceted issue, and trends in youth well-being are not clear or universal. Narrowing the challenges young people face to a single factor ignores scientific research and the many stressors that affect young people today, such as academic pressure, school safety, socioeconomic challenges, and substance abuse.”

A Meta spokesperson said in a recent statement that the company strongly disagrees with the allegations outlined in the lawsuit and is “confident the evidence will demonstrate our long-standing commitment to supporting young people.”

Google Spokesperson José Castañeda said the allegations against YouTube were “absolutely not true.” “Providing young people with a safer, healthier experience has always been at the core of our business,” he said in a statement. he said.

The lawsuit will be the first of several lawsuits starting this year that aim to hold social media companies accountable for harming children’s mental health.

in New Mexico, Opening statements begin on Monday Following an undercover online investigation, Meta and its social media platforms will be prosecuted over allegations that they failed to protect young users from sexual abuse. Attorney General Raúl Torrez sued Meta and Zuckerberg in late 2023, and Zuckerberg was later dropped from the case.

New Mexico did not seek to hold Meta accountable for its content, but rather its role in pushing that content out through complex algorithms that amplified potentially harmful material, prosecutors said, revealing internal documents in which Meta employees estimated that nearly 100,000 children were sexually abused on the company’s platforms every day.

While Meta accuses Torrez of cherry-picking selected documents and making “sensational” claims, he denies the legal accusations. The company said it consulted with parents and law enforcement to offer settings and tools for parents, as well as protections built into social media accounts.

The federal trial, which begins in June in Oakland, California, will be the first to represent school districts suing social media platforms for harming children.

Also, more than one 40 state attorneys general filed a lawsuit Meta argues that Instagram and Facebook are harming young people and contributing to the youth mental health crisis by deliberately designing features that make children addicted to their platforms. The majority of lawsuits filed their cases in federal court, but some filed suit in their home states.

tiktok It faces similar lawsuits in more than a dozen states.

Meanwhile, other countries are passing new laws to limit social media for children. In January, French MPs approve the bill The idea of ​​​​setting a minimum age for the use of platforms, banning social media for children under 15, paves the way for the measure to come into force in September at the beginning of the next academic year It is gaining momentum across Europe.

In Australia, social media companies have since revoked access to approximately 4.7 million accounts determined to belong to children. the country banned the use of the platforms Officials said it was done by people under the age of 16. Law sparked worrying debate Various measures have been taken in Australia regarding technology use, privacy, child safety and mental health, and have encouraged other countries to take similar measures.

British government He also said last month that he would consider banning young people from social media It tightens laws designed to protect children from harmful content and excessive screen time.

Ortutay reported from Oakland, California. Associated Press Writer Morgan Lee in Santa Fe, New Mexico, contributed to this story.