Meta Harms Children's Mental Health and Safety, Find both Los Angeles and New Mexico Juries

Is the tide turning against social media and teens? Decisions in closely watched Los Angeles and New Mexico trials indicate that it just might be.

On Wednesday, a Los Angeles jury found both YouTube and Meta liable in a landmark social media addiction lawsuit.

“The evidence showed that Meta and YouTube knew their platforms were hooking children and harming their mental health, and instead of fixing the problem they kept developing features to maximize the time kids spent on their apps. Now a jury has told them that is not acceptable, and you are being held accountable,” said lead trial counsel Mark Lanier in a press release.

James P. Steyer, founder and CEO of the nonprofit Common Sense Media, called the verdict a powerful recognition of what families have known for years: “Social media companies deliberately design their platforms to keep kids hooked, consequences to their mental and physical health be damned,” he said in a statement. “The momentum for change is no longer building. It’s here.”

And on Tuesday, in what the state’s attorney general Raúl Torrez calls a “watershed moment,” the jury ruled that Meta violated state consumer protection law for enabling child exploitation on Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp and misleading consumers about the platforms’ safety, costing the company $375 million in civil penalties.

The verdicts were the first such rulings in a wave of thousands of lawsuits Meta is facing about how these platforms become addictive and affect the mental health of young people. More than 40 state attorneys general have filed lawsuits against Meta, claiming it’s been deliberately designing addictive social media features that are contributing to a mental health crisis among young people.

“Meta’s house of cards is beginning to fall,” Sacha Haworth, executive director of watchdog group the Tech Oversight Project, told the Associated Press. “For years, it’s been glaringly obvious that Meta has failed to stop sexual predators from turning online interactions into real world harm.”

Torrez called the New Mexico jury’s verdict “a historic victory for every child and family who has paid the price for Meta’s choice to put profits over kids’ safety.” He added, “Meta executives knew their products harmed children, disregarded warnings from their own employees, and lied to the public about what they knew. Today the jury joined families, educators, and child safety experts in saying enough is enough.”

Meta responded to the New Mexico ruling in a statement made through a spokesperson: “We respectfully disagree with the verdict and will appeal. We work hard to keep people safe on our platforms and are clear about the challenges of identifying and removing bad actors or harmful content.”

Wednesday’s L.A. verdict found that Meta and YouTube were to blame for the depression and anxiety of a 20-year-old woman who compulsively used the platforms as a child, and awarded her damages of $3 million, 70% of which must be paid by Meta. More damages, for malice and fraud, may be added.

A Meta spokesperson said the company disagrees with the verdict and is evaluating its legal options, according to NPR, while Google did not immediately respond to the verdict. 

Tuesday’s verdict comes after more than two years of litigation by the New Mexico Department of Justice to “hold Meta accountable for its dishonesty and design choices that harm children,” according to its press release. Internal documents revealed repeated warning from both Meta employees and outside child safety experts about the dangers present on the platforms, including features that allegedly enabled pedophile and predators and that allegedly addicted young people and exposed them to dangerous content.

In a second phase of the trial, starting in May, Torrez said ⁠his office will ask the court to order Meta to make safety changes to its platforms and to impose additional monetary penalties.

Online safety advocates were celebrating both rulings, which come amidst a steady clip of studies showing links between teen social media use and mental health issues such as depression and anxiety.

“This is a turning point — from here on, social media companies will finally be forced to make changes to their platforms,” said social scientist and The Anxious Generation author Jonathan Haidt on his Instagram Tuesday in response to the New Mexico ruling. “Thousands of children are dead. Millions of others have suffered mental health harms. The buck stops here.” Further, he praised Torrez for “fighting this David and Goliath battle.”

“Today’s verdict is a major step toward accountability. For years, families have been told this was a parenting issue, but the jury saw the truth: these companies made deliberate decisions to prioritize growth and profit over kids’ safety,” said Shelby Knox, director of online safety campaigns at ParentsTogether Action, said in a statement.

“This case is just the beginning,” she added. “There are thousands more families still seeking justice, and this fight is far from over. These are the Big Tobacco trials of our generation, and the fact that this case made it to trial, and now this verdict, is a powerful signal that change is coming.”

Steyer of Common Sense Media continued: “Social media giants would never have faced trial if they had prioritized kids’ safety over engagement. Instead, they buried their own research showing children were being harmed, and used kids and society as guinea pigs in massive, uncontrolled, and wildly profitable experiments. Now, executives are being held to account.”

The verdict, he said, along with other recent court rulings, “should embolden lawmakers in California and across the country to use their authority to force real change in how these companies design and operate their products. We must keep pushing, advancing, and enforcing stronger laws for social media and AI youth safety.”