A jury in Los Angeles County on Wednesday found Meta and Alphabet's YouTube negligent in the design of their social media platforms, delivering the first jury verdict in the nationwide wave of social media addiction litigation and awarding $3 million in compensatory damages to a now-20-year-old plaintiff identified in court as K.G.M.
The jury determined that Meta bore 70 percent of the liability, with YouTube responsible for the remaining 30 percent, according to NBC News, NPR, and Reuters, which covered the verdict as it was read in court. The jury also concluded that the companies' conduct warrants punitive damages — a separate phase of deliberations still to come, which could dramatically increase the final financial toll on the two companies.
What the Jury Decided
The jury of seven women and five men concluded that Meta's Instagram and Google's YouTube were negligent in their platform design, and that their negligence was a "substantial factor" in causing harm to K.G.M. — depression, anxiety, and body dysmorphia she testified were tied to her compulsive use of the platforms from a young age. The jury also found that both companies failed to adequately warn users of the dangers their platforms posed, according to NBC News.
K.G.M. testified that she first began using YouTube at age 6 and Instagram at age 11. She told the jury she felt compelled to be on the platforms constantly and feared missing out if she wasn't — a fear she said affected her self-worth. Her legal team argued the platforms were deliberately engineered with addictive features including infinite scroll, algorithmic recommendations, and notification systems designed to maximize time-on-app, particularly among younger users.
Deliberations stretched across nine days, totaling nearly 44 hours, and the jury at one point told the presiding judge, Judge Carolyn B. Kuhl of Los Angeles Superior Court, that they were having trouble reaching consensus on one of the defendants, according to NBC News.
Internal Documents: The Evidentiary Core
A central element of the plaintiff's case was a set of internal Meta documents shown to jurors. As reported by NPR, one document stated: "If we wanna win big with teens, we must bring them in as tweens." Another internal memo showed that 11-year-olds were four times as likely to return to Instagram compared to competing apps — despite the platform's stated minimum age of 13.
When Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg was questioned about those documents during his court testimony in February, he told the jury that keeping young users safe had always been a company priority. "If people feel like they're not having a good experience, why would they keep using the product?" Zuckerberg said, according to NPR's reporting from the trial.
Meta's lawyers, for their part, argued that K.G.M.'s mental health challenges were not caused by social media, and pointed to what a spokesperson described as "significant emotional and physical abuse" the plaintiff experienced in childhood. An attorney for YouTube told the jury there was not a single mention of addiction to that platform in K.G.M.'s medical records, according to NBC News.
The Bellwether Function
The Los Angeles trial was a bellwether — a test case selected to go first, with results meant to calibrate the remaining litigation. K.G.M.'s lawsuit is tied to roughly 2,000 other pending lawsuits filed by parents, teenagers, school districts, and state attorneys general against Meta, YouTube, TikTok, and Snap, according to the New York Times. At least 1,600 plaintiffs are part of the consolidated proceeding from which K.G.M.'s case was drawn, including over 350 families and more than 250 school districts, per NBC News.
Snap and TikTok were also originally named as defendants in K.G.M.'s case, but both settled with the plaintiff before trial began. Terms of those settlements were not disclosed, according to Reuters.
A separate state trial involving Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, and Snapchat is scheduled to begin in Los Angeles in July, said Matthew Bergman, a founding attorney at the Social Media Victims Law Center who has been coordinating much of the plaintiffs' litigation, per Reuters. A federal case brought by multiple states and school districts is expected to go to trial this summer in Oakland, California.
A Week of Verdicts Against Meta
The timing of the Los Angeles verdict compounds an already difficult legal week for Meta. On Tuesday — one day before the LA jury returned its decision — a separate jury in New Mexico found Meta liable for violating the state's consumer protection laws in a case brought by New Mexico's attorney general. That jury, also finding that Meta had failed to protect children from online predators and sexual exploitation on Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, ordered the company to pay $375 million in civil penalties, according to NBC News and Reuters. Meta has stated it disagrees with that verdict and plans to appeal.
Combined, the two verdicts this week represent the first time juries have formally decided that major social media platforms bear legal liability — whether for product design decisions or consumer deception — related to harms to children and young users.
Industry Reaction and Legal Landscape
Shares of Meta were up 1 percent after the LA verdict, and Alphabet shares were slightly higher, suggesting financial markets viewed the $3 million compensatory award as manageable — pending the outcome of the punitive phase and future cases. Both companies' market capitalizations run in the trillions of dollars.
Meta issued a statement saying the company "respectfully disagree[s] with the verdict" and that its lawyers are "evaluating our legal options." Google did not immediately comment, according to Reuters.
Plaintiff co-lead counsel Joseph VanZandt said in a joint statement: "For years, social media companies have profited from targeting children while concealing their addictive and dangerous design features. Today's verdict is a referendum — from a jury, to an entire industry — that accountability has arrived."
The legal theory underpinning the cases — that social media platforms constitute defective products capable of causing personal injury — has historically faced a significant obstacle in the form of Section 230 of the Communications Act, which shields internet companies from liability for user-generated content. Plaintiffs' lawyers sidestepped that argument by focusing on platform design rather than specific posts or pieces of content, a strategy the New York Times noted made it harder for the companies to invoke their standard defenses.
The U.S. Congress has not passed comprehensive federal legislation regulating social media's effects on children, despite years of bipartisan hearings. In the absence of federal action, at least 20 states enacted laws last year related to social media and minors, including age verification requirements and school cellphone restrictions, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures, a nonpartisan organization that tracks state law. NetChoice, a trade association backed by Meta and Google, is challenging those age verification laws in court.
What Comes Next
The jury's finding that Meta and YouTube's conduct merits punitive damages means a second phase of the trial will now determine how much more the companies must pay. Punitive damages in product liability cases can substantially exceed compensatory awards, particularly when juries conclude corporate conduct was willful or malicious. The jury will weigh those questions against the companies' financial scale — Meta's and Alphabet's market capitalizations each exceed $1 trillion, per their respective public filings.
For the thousands of similar lawsuits waiting in the wings, Wednesday's verdict is less about the dollar amount and more about the legal precedent. A jury — twelve ordinary citizens after a monthlong trial — looked at the internal documents, heard testimony from Zuckerberg himself, and concluded that the companies were negligent and that their negligence caused real harm to a real person. That finding, even if it survives appeal, does not automatically bind other courts. But it tells the rest of the industry, and every other plaintiff's legal team, that Silicon Valley's longstanding immunity is no longer a given.