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A Los Angeles jury on Wednesday found Meta and Google liable in a closely watched trial accusing social media platforms of designing their products to get young users addicted, awarding the plaintiff $6 million in damages.
Meta was ordered to pay 70% of the awarded compensatory damages, while Google is responsible for the remaining 30%, for a total of $3 million. Hours later, the jury ordered Meta to pay another $2.1 million and Google an additional $900,000 in punitive damages.
Unlike compensatory damages, jurors were not asked to award punitive damages as a percentage of a lump sum. The verdict came after nine days, including roughly 43 hours of deliberations.
“For years, social media companies have profited from targeting children while concealing their addictive and dangerous design features,” the plaintiff’s lawyers said in a statement. “Today’s verdict is a referendum — from a jury, to an entire industry — that accountability has arrived.”
“Thousands of individuals and families continue to litigate in the Los Angeles Superior Court,” the statement continued. “We will carry this fight forward on their behalf with the same commitment and determination that brought us to this verdict today.”
Outside the courthouse, parents who say they lost their children to social media-related deaths gathered in anticipation of the verdict. There were cheers and hugs when they heard the decision.
Jurors found that Instagram’s parent company Meta and Google’s YouTube acted with “malice, oppression, or fraud” meaning punitive damages would also be assessed on top of the $3 million total compensatory damages. A hearing will be held in which each side will have 20 minutes to argue punitive damages.
“We respectfully disagree with the verdict and are evaluating our legal options,” a Meta spokesperson said shortly after the verdict.
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José Castañeda, a spokesperson for Google, told FOX Business the company disagreed with the verdict and planned to appeal.
“This case misunderstands YouTube, which is a responsibly built streaming platform, not a social media site,” he said.
The case centered on a now-20-year-old California woman identified as K.G.M., who said social media platforms encouraged addictive use when she was a minor and contributed to depression and suicidal thoughts.
Her lawsuit alleged that companies behind several major platforms designed their products in ways that encouraged compulsive use among young people.
The companies have denied wrongdoing and argued their services include safety tools and parental controls.
TikTok and Snap, the parent company of Snapchat, were originally named as defendants but settled ahead of trial, leaving Meta and Google-owned YouTube as the remaining companies in the case.
Jurors listened to about a month of lawyers’ arguments, testimony, and evidence, including from K.G.M. herself. She said she began using YouTube at age 6 and Instagram at age 9 and told the jury she was on social media “all day long” as a child.
Her lawyers noted specific design features they said were intended to ‘hook’ young users, like the “infinite” nature of feeds that allow an endless supply of content, autoplay features, and even notifications.
The landmark trial had been closely watched as one of the first to test before a jury whether social media companies can be held legally responsible for alleged harms tied to youth use of their platforms.
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Jurors were asked to determine whether Meta or YouTube should have known their platforms posed a danger to children, whether the companies were negligent in designing their products, and if so, whether their services were a “substantial factor” in causing the plaintiff’s mental health issues.
On Monday, jurors asked Judge Carolyn B. Kuhl how to proceed amid difficulty reaching a verdict involving one of the two defendants. They were given their previous instructions, with the judge suggesting they read them aloud before being sent back for more deliberations.
The verdict came a day after a jury in New Mexico ordered Meta to pay $375 million after finding the company misled users about the safety of its platforms and allegedly enabled child sexual exploitation in a separate trial.
After the verdict in Los Angeles, New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez called the jurors’ decision a “step toward justice” that puts big tech executives on notice.
“Juries in New Mexico and California have recognized that Meta’s public deception and design features are putting children in harm’s way,” Torrez said. “In the next phase of New Mexico’s trial, my number one priority remains changing the company’s longstanding and dangerous practice of prioritizing profits over children’s safety. We will seek court-mandated changes to Meta’s platforms that offer protections for kids.”
FOX Business’ Kelly Saberi, as well as The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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