Laura Marquez-Garrett (middle), a plaintiffs’ legal professional for the Social Media Victims Law Center, gathers with members of the family of victims as they react to information that the jury has found Meta and Google liable within the social media habit trial, exterior the Los Angeles Superior Court on March 25, 2026.
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A California jury on Wednesday found that Meta and Google had been in charge for the melancholy and anxiousness of a girl who compulsively used social media as a small youngster, awarding her $6 million in a uncommon verdict holding Silicon Valley accountable for its position in fueling a youth psychological well being disaster.
The jurors concluded that Meta and Google ought to pay the lady $3 million in compensatory damages and a further $3 million in punitive damages, with Meta on the hook for 70% of that quantity.
While the monetary punishment is miniscule for corporations every value trillions of {dollars}, the choice remains to be consequential. It represents the primary time a jury has found that social media apps needs to be handled as faulty merchandise for being engineered to take advantage of the creating brains of children and youngsters.
The verdict validated the plaintiff’s attorneys’ method of shifting the authorized goal; as a substitute of specializing in the content material folks see on social media, the case put the highlight on how social media companies had been designed. Meta’s apps, together with Instagram, and Google’s YouTube, the jury concluded, had been intentionally constructed to be addictive and the businesses’ executives knew this and failed to guard their youngest customers.
The end result of this case may affect hundreds of different consolidated instances towards the social media corporations. The litigation has drawn comparisons to the authorized campaign within the Nineteen Nineties towards Big Tobacco, which pressured the {industry} to to cease focusing on minors with promoting.
While precisely how the litigation might upend the social media panorama is unsure, the attorneys concerned within the instances towards the tech giants view the Los Angeles verdict as a promising early signal that the dam is breaking in favor of industry-wide adjustments.
“Today’s verdict is a referendum — from a jury, to an entire industry — that accountability has arrived,” Joseph VanZandt, the co-lead lawyer for households and others suing social media corporations, mentioned in an announcement after Wednesday’s verdict.
The lead trial lawyer for the plaintiff, Mark Lanier, conceded that the jury may have imposed higher monetary penalties on the businesses.
Lanier, a Texas-born longtime litigator who has a folksy method and can be a part-time pastor, had proven the jury a jar stuffed with M&Ms throughout arguments on punitive damages on Wednesday. He mentioned every bit of sweet represented a billion {dollars} of the businesses’ value. “You’ve got to talk to Meta in Meta money,” he informed the jury.
After the overall $6 million in damages was introduced, Lanier informed reporters exterior the courtroom, “I would’ve thought it was likely we would have gotten a bigger number.” But, he added, “I trust the system and trust people to assess what’s right and best.”
Just earlier than he spoke, two jurors appeared within the hallway of the courtroom and a swarm of reporters shortly encircled them.
The jury foreman, who supplied solely his first title, Matthew, mentioned jurors tried to maintain their feelings and private experiences out of deliberations. “We stuck to following the law and how it was presented to us.”
Another juror, who gave her title solely as Victoria, acknowledged that the jury wished to ship a message to the businesses. “We wanted them to feel it,” she mentioned. “We wanted them to realize this was unacceptable.”
Meta and Google vowed to enchantment. In an announcement, Meta mentioned teen psychological well being is “profoundly complex and cannot be linked to a single app,” saying the corporate stays assured in its report of defending teenagers on-line.
“This case misunderstands YouTube, which is a responsibly built streaming platform, not a social media site,” mentioned Google spokesman José Castañeda.
Meta hit with $375 million in damages in separate New Mexico trial
The verdict in Los Angeles got here a day after a jury in a separate trial in New Mexico ordered Meta to pay $375 million in damages for failing to guard younger customers from youngster predators on Instagram and Facebook. The New Mexico jury found Meta liable for deceptive customers in regards to the security of its platforms, declaring that the tech firm had flouted state shopper safety legal guidelines.
That trial will enter a second section in May by which a choose will resolve whether or not Meta created a public nuisance and if the corporate should pay further penalties to deal with harms. New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez mentioned he will even ask the court docket to pressure Meta to alter its apps to make them safer.
“Juries in New Mexico and California have recognized that Meta’s public deception and design features are putting children in harm’s way,” Torrez mentioned in an announcement on Wednesday.
The blockbuster verdicts land towards the backdrop of faculty districts and state lawmakers across the nation limiting or banning cellphone use in colleges. This week’s verdicts mark the primary time juries have determined that tech corporations are at the very least partially chargeable for on-line and off-line risks children and youngsters encounter after incessantly utilizing social media.
During the trial in Los Angeles, the jury of 5 males and seven girls heard competing narratives about what position social media platforms performed within the psychological well being struggles of Kaley, additionally recognized as KGM. Now 20 years previous, Kaley, who’s from Chico, Calif., mentioned she first began utilizing YouTube at 6 years previous and Instagram when she was 11.
Lawyers for KGM argued that Instagram and YouTube had been intentionally designed to be addictive and the businesses knew the platforms had been harming younger folks, whereas the tech corporations countered that their companies can’t be blamed for advanced psychological well being points.
KGM’s authorized workforce confirmed the jury inner paperwork from Meta by which CEO Mark Zuckerberg and different executives described the corporate’s efforts to draw and maintain children and teenagers on its platforms. One doc mentioned: “If we wanna win big with teens, we must bring them in as tweens.” Another inner memo confirmed that 11-year-olds had been 4 occasions as more likely to maintain coming again to Instagram, in contrast with competing apps, regardless of the platform requiring customers to be at the very least 13 years previous.
Meta CEO and Chairman Mark Zuckerberg (middle) leaves the Los Angeles Superior Court after testifying within the social media trial on Feb. 18, 2026.
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Under questioning about these paperwork, Zuckerberg informed the jury that holding younger customers secure has all the time been an organization precedence. “If people feel like they’re not having a good experience, why would they keep using the product?” Zuckerberg mentioned.
The trial is a take a look at case, referred to as a bellwether, tied to about 2,000 different pending lawsuits introduced by dad and mom and faculty districts arguing that social media giants needs to be thought-about producers of faulty merchandise for hooking a technology of younger folks to social media feeds.
Throughout the case, the businesses insisted that there isn’t a scientific proof that social media causes psychological well being points, suggesting that they’re getting used as a scapegoat for the multi-faceted emotional points youngsters face that may have many root causes.
Snapchat and TikTok had been additionally defendants within the case, however each corporations settled with KGM earlier than the trial started.
LA case targeted on design of social media platforms to beat legal responsibility defend
For a long time, tech corporations have averted authorized legal responsibility over the content material that seems on their websites due to a federal regulation referred to as Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act, which says that tech corporations should not legally liable for what their customers put up. This has made it tough to convey instances over social media harms to trial.
In the Los Angeles case, attorneys took a distinct method by specializing in how tech corporations constructed their platforms. They argued that options like infinite scroll, fixed notifications, autoplaying movies and magnificence filters made apps like Instagram and YouTube equal to a “digital casino,” which younger folks found too irresistible to place down.
By taking this tack, the attorneys pursued a case alleging faulty design that was capable of get across the excessive bar set by Section 230. It’s not what customers put up, the attorneys argued, however the very structure of social media platforms.
“How do you make a child never put down the phone? That’s called the engineering of addiction,” Lanier mentioned in the course of the trial.
Over the course of 5 weeks, jurors heard from therapists, engineers, tech executives together with Zuckerberg, and the plaintiff herself about simply how culpable huge tech corporations needs to be for contributing to KGM’s psychological well being struggles.
Were her points pre-existing, or exacerbated by her residence life, or deepened by social media?
Meta and Google fought again by underscoring the emotional and bodily abuse her medical data indicated she skilled at residence. Lawyers for the tech corporations additionally hammered the purpose that Kaley’s personal therapist by no means documented that social media use was a think about her psychological well being issues.
From the witness stand, KGM testified that utilizing social media affected her self-worth as she received additional drawn into the apps and withdrew from buddies and household. She developed melancholy and physique dysmorphia, she mentioned, as she constantly in contrast herself to others and used magnificence filters to reinforce her look.
She so craved the validation of social media, she mentioned, that she would run off to the toilet at college to test the variety of “likes” her posts had acquired. She testified that it was laborious to focus on faculty as a result of all she wished to do was keep glued to her social media feeds.
The jury was not tasked with deciding whether or not Meta and Google had created Kaley’s psychological well being woes, however quite if her compulsive social media use was a “substantial factor” in her struggles and if the faulty design of the platforms was the direct explanation for her misery.
Lanier, who is understood for trotting out massive reveals for trial spectacle, closed his questioning of Zuckerberg with one such show.
The lawyer and a number of of his associates held up a 35-foot collage that includes a whole lot of selfies Kaley had posted to Instagram, lots of which used magnificence filters, simply as she was fighting body-image points. Zuckerberg appeared on, as Lanier peppered him with questions on how and why a lady below the age of 13, Meta’s minimal age to create an account, was capable of put up to the app so obsessively.
In his closing argument, Lanier drew the jury’s consideration to inner paperwork exhibiting how high officers at Meta and Google had been conscious of how their merchandise had been inflicting hurt to younger folks.
“I don’t naysay the opportunity to make money,” Lanier mentioned. “But when you’re making money off of kids, you have to do it responsibly.”
NPR’s Shannon Bond contributed to this report.
