Two landmark jury verdicts in two days may have put the social media industry on notice, suggesting ‘long trouble’ for the tech companies. According to a report by The Wall Street Journal, the verdicts do something significant: they signal that future juries may be willing to hold social media platforms liable under product liability theory – in the same manner as a legal framework was used to go after cigarette manufacturers decades ago.
What are the verdicts in Meta and YouTube case
On Tuesday, a New Mexico jury found that Meta had exposed minor users to harmful content, including online solicitation, sexually explicit material, and human trafficking, in violation of consumer protection laws. Jurors awarded $375 million in damages.About 24 hours after, a Los Angeles jury delivered a blow to both Instagram parent company Meta and YouTube after it found that both the social media platforms have contributed to the mental health struggles of a 20-year-old woman, identified as Kaley G.M., due to the addictive nature of their platforms. She was awarded $6 million.
Meta and Google push back against the verdict
Meta said it would continue to fight every case on its individual merits, pointing out that the New Mexico damages were a fraction of what plaintiffs had demanded. “Teen mental health is profoundly complex and cannot be linked to a single app. We will continue to defend ourselves vigorously,” a Meta spokeswoman said. The company also argued, ahead of trial, that many of the design features under scrutiny – including infinite scroll and instant notifications – are “inescapably linked” to the way content is delivered.Meta added that it has spent over a decade developing tools to protect young users, including Teen Accounts introduced in 2024, which hundreds of millions of minors now use, with tighter controls on messaging and content access.Meanwhile, Google, which owns YouTube, said it would appeal the California verdict and disagrees with its findings. YouTube’s lead trial lawyer, Luis Li, said that the platform has introduced features to interrupt long viewing sessions and give parents insight into their children’s screen time. “You can’t walk into someone’s phone and turn on all of these features,” he said.
The ‘Tobacco Playbook’ and what may come next
The report said that apart from forming the basis of thousands of similar lawsuits waiting to be heard, the verdicts may encourage new plaintiffs to come forward, raising the prospect of mass litigation – akin to the legal campaign against the tobacco industry in the 1990s.In the 1990s, a legal campaign against tobacco companies shook the industry after decades of failed individual lawsuits transformed in to a coordinated offensive that ultimately handed win to the people. Starting with Mississippi in 1994, more than 40 states sued the major tobacco companies to recover Medicaid costs for treating smoking-related illnesses. The result was: industry agreed to pay states more than $200 billion over 25 years, and they were forced to ban advertising targeting youth and pull outdoor billboards. Internal documents were made public, revealing that tobacco companies had known for decades that nicotine was addictive and smoking caused cancer – even as they publicly denied it.The California case was the first trial out of thousands of consolidated lawsuits filed by teenagers, school districts, and state attorneys general against Meta, YouTube, TikTok, and Snap. Many more trials are scheduled for later this year.
