A Los Angeles jury just did what Big Tech spent twenty years insisting was legally impossible: it held Meta and YouTube liable for addicting a child. After nine days of deliberation, jurors awarded a 20-year-old named Kaylee $6 million — and hers is just the first of thousands of social media addiction lawsuits behind it.Kaylee's story is the template for the whole mass action: a YouTube channel at six, Instagram by nine, 284 videos posted before she finished elementary school, and stretches of 1...
A Los Angeles jury just did what Big Tech spent twenty years insisting was legally impossible: it held Meta and YouTube liable for addicting a child. After nine days of deliberation, jurors awarded a 20-year-old named Kaylee $6 million — and hers is just the first of thousands of social media addiction lawsuits behind it.
Kaylee's story is the template for the whole mass action: a YouTube channel at six, Instagram by nine, 284 videos posted before she finished elementary school, and stretches of 16-hour days on the platforms. She testified that the likes-and-followers feedback loop kept pulling her back through anxiety, depression, body dysmorphia, cyberbullying, and sextortion — the pattern expert witnesses told the jury is the hallmark of addiction.
Isn't this exactly the lawsuit Section 230 was supposed to make impossible? We break down the 26 words that created the internet and the exceptions that swallowed the shield here — Doe v. Internet Brands, Lee v. Amazon, and Lemmon v. Snap, where courts held that platforms still answer for their own product design. Judge Carolyn Kuhl drew the same line in KGM v. Meta: beauty filters, infinite scroll, autoplay, and push notifications aren't third-party content, they're design choices — and a jury would decide whether they were a substantial factor in Kaylee's harm.
At trial, TikTok and Snapchat settled just days before opening statements. Meta and Google rolled the dice. Legendary plaintiffs' lawyer Mark Lanier confronted Mark Zuckerberg — testifying before a jury for the first time — with Meta's own documents: "If we want to win big with teens, we must bring them in as tweens." A count of four million under-13 users in the US. Employees comparing Instagram to a drug and describing the company as "basically pushers." And a 20-foot collage of selfies Kaylee posted before she was old enough to have an account at all.
Then, the verdict itself: what California products liability law asked the jury to decide, the 70/30 fault split between Meta and YouTube, the malice finding behind $3 million in punitive damages, and the $375 million New Mexico verdict against Meta just 24 hours earlier. Big Tobacco's reckoning took 50 years. Big Tech's may have just started.
Plus a LegalEagle announcement: the Eagle Team is partnering with one of the leading firms taking Facebook, TikTok, and Snapchat to task, representing families harmed by social media addiction. Contact us today to learn more about your eligibility: https://legaleagle.link/harm
(00:00) A landmark verdict against Big Tech
(01:04) Thousands of cases waiting in line
(02:13) Section 230: the 26 words
(03:18) Where Section 230 ends
(04:35) KGM v. Meta, the bellwether
(05:46) The ruling that forced a trial
(07:02) Settlements and Kaylee's testimony
(08:11) Meta's internal documents
(09:52) Zuckerberg takes the stand
(13:01) What the jury had to decide
(13:50) Damages: the 70/30 split and punitives
(14:34) The next wave: New Mexico and beyond
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Sorry, occupational hazard: This is not legal advice, nor can I give you legal advice. I AM NOT YOUR LAWYER. Sorry! Everything here is for informational purposes only and not for the purpose of providing legal advice. You should contact your attorney to obtain advice with respect to any particular issue or problem. Nothing here should be construed to form an attorney-client relationship. Also, some of the links in this post may be affiliate links, meaning, at no cost to you, I will earn a small commission if you click through and make a purchase. But if you click, it really helps me make more of these videos! All non-licensed clips used for fair use commentary, criticism, and educational purposes. See Hosseinzadeh v. Klein, 276 F.Supp.3d 34 (S.D.N.Y. 2017); Equals Three, LLC v. Jukin Media, Inc., 139 F. Supp. 3d 1094 (C.D. Cal. 2015).
