The Addictive Potential of Social Media Platforms and Consequent Harm to Young People: A Test Case in America
On 25 March 2026, a 10-2 majority of jurors at the Los Angeles Superior Court decided in favour of the 20-year-old lead plaintiff, identified in court filings only by her initials “KGM”, awarding her $2. 1 million in punitive damages against Meta, a further $900,000 against YouTube, and additional compensatory damages of $3 million. The plaintiff’s lead attorney, Mark Lanier, had originally sought $1 billion in punitive damages. The twelve-member jury’s decision followed 44 hours of deliberation, over nine days- indicative of the difficulties in reaching a verdict. The plaintiff, whose first name is Kaley, and her mother had brought the case against Meta (owner of Instagram) and YouTube (owned by Google) in 2023.
The two main allegations against the tech companies centred on whether they were negligent in the design or operation of Instagram/YouTube, and whether they knew or should reasonably have known that the design or operation was dangerous or likely to be dangerous when used by a minor. Having decided that the companies were negligent, the jurors then had to decide whether their negligence was a substantial factor in causing harm to KGM.
The case brought by KGM focused on the design of the tech companies’ products, rather than the actual content. Among the design features that keep users glued to their screens are the infinite scroll format, which automatically adds content; video autoplay, which allows the automatic play-back of online videos; and notification systems, which enable a stream of alerts. This is the first lawsuit in which tech companies have been taken to court and held responsible for the addictive properties of their products. TikTok and Snap settled with the plaintiff, for undisclosed sums, during the week before the trial began, but remain defendants in several forthcoming trials.
During the six-week trial, which opened on 27 January 2026, jurors heard the testimonies of the plaintiff, the CEOs of Meta and YouTube (Mark Zuckerberg and Adam Mosseri, respectively), expert witnesses, and whistleblowers. KGM claimed she began using YouTube from the age of six, followed by Instagram at the age of nine. By the time she turned ten, she was depressed and began to self-harm. At the age of 13, she was diagnosed by her therapist with body dysmorphic disorder and social phobia.
The day before the jury’s verdict in Los Angeles, Meta was fined $375 million in civil penalties following a separate seven-week trial in New Mexico. The case was brought by the state in 2023 for misleading users about the safety of its platforms and enabling harm of children’s mental health, in violation of New Mexico’s Unfair Practices Act- a consumer protection law. This was the first case in which an American state held a tech company responsible for harming young people.
Meta will appeal the verdicts from Los Angeles and New Mexico, while YouTube will appeal against the LA decision. In the words of a Meta spokesperson: “Teen mental is profoundly complex and cannot be linked to a single app.” The two recent trials have set a precedent and opened the floodgates to further litigation. In the state of California alone, another 21 “bellwether” trials, following that of KGM, are scheduled to be brought against Meta, Snap, TikTok, and YouTube- on behalf of more than 1,600 plaintiffs, more than 350 families and 250 school districts. Although the awarded damages in California and New Mexico will have no significant financial impact on the well-heeled defendants, the cumulative impact of repeated lawsuits can turn out to be considerable.
The potential harm caused by social media platforms has led Australia to restrict all users aged 16 and under from holding accounts on these platforms, from 10 December 2025 onwards. This is the first comprehensive age-restricted social media ban anywhere in the world, and the impacts of this experiment are being watched closely around the globe. The UK is currently running a pilot scheme to test the impact on 300 teenagers, divided into four groups, of either a total social media ban, a digital curfew between 21:00 and 07:00, a time limit of 60 minutes per day on app usage, or no intervention at all (the control group).
Social media platforms have considerably benefited the public as a whole through improving connectivity, establishing social links and online friendships, and enabling the sharing of educational content news. But there is a significant downside. Symptoms of depression and anxiety, especially among young people, are increasingly being attributed to social media addiction, which has, however, not yet been recognised as a formal psychiatric diagnosis in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5-TR). Like many other recognised addictions, excessive use of social media is disruptive to entrapped young people, who can dedicate many hours of the day to screen time, which in turn interferes with daily routines, family relationships, schoolwork, and social interaction. Low self-esteem, negative perceptions of body image, exposure to harmful content, cyberbullying, and online sexual exploitation have impacted the mental health of a new generation of youngsters brought up on digital media, leading to self-harm, violence towards others, and even suicide-all of which are entirely preventable. Parental controls on settings and private accounts can only go so far in a world where smartphones are ubiquitous. Paradoxically, in our hyper-connected world, isolation and loneliness have come to define the lives of many vulnerable teenagers.
It is difficult to generalise about the impact of social media platforms, since no two young persons are the same. Personal circumstances may vary, as may the resilience to withstand the darker side of, and thereby benefit from, interaction with social media platforms. The recent trials in the US have started a process which is likely to be protracted and intensely contested, but may eventually lead, one hopes, to make social media safer for young people.
Ashis Banerjee