Jury orders Meta and Google to pay woman $3 million in social media addiction trial

Bobby Allyn Laura Marquez-Garrett (center), a plaintiffs' attorney for the Social Media Victims Law Center, gathers with family members of victims as they react to news that the jury has found Meta and Google liable in the social media addiction trial, outside the Los Angeles Superior Court on March 25, 2026. Frederic J. The jurors concluded that Meta and Google should pay the woman $3 million in compensatory damages and an additional $3 million in punitive damages, with Meta on the hook for 70% of that amount. The outcome of this case could influence thousands of other consolidated cases against the social media companies. The jury foreman, who provided only his first name, Matthew, said jurors tried to keep their emotions and personal experiences out of deliberations. "We stuck to following the law and how it was presented to us." Another juror, who gave her name only as Victoria, acknowledged that the jury wanted to send a message to the companies. "We wanted them to feel it," she said. In a statement, Meta said teen mental health is "profoundly complex and cannot be linked to a single app," saying the company remains confident in its record of protecting teens online. "This case misunderstands YouTube, which is a responsibly built streaming platform, not a social media site," said Google spokesman José Castañeda. The New Mexico jury found Meta responsible for misleading consumers about the safety of its platforms, declaring that the tech company had flouted state consumer protection laws. "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 a statement on Wednesday. The blockbuster verdicts land against the backdrop of school districts and state lawmakers around the country limiting or banning phone use in schools. This week's verdicts mark the first time juries have decided that tech companies are at least partially liable for online and off-line dangers kids and teenagers encounter after incessantly using social media. Lawyers for KGM argued that Instagram and YouTube were deliberately designed to be addictive and the companies knew the platforms were harming young people, while the tech companies countered that their services cannot be blamed for complex mental health issues. KGM's legal team showed the jury internal documents from Meta in which CEO Mark Zuckerberg and other executives described the company's efforts to attract and keep kids and teens on its platforms. Meta CEO and Chairman Mark Zuckerberg (center) leaves the Los Angeles Superior Court after testifying in the social media trial on Feb. 18, 2026. "If people feel like they're not having a good experience, why would they keep using the product?" Zuckerberg said. Technology Meta and YouTube head to trial over harm to children after TikTok settles The trial is a test case, known as a bellwether, tied to about 2,000 other pending lawsuits brought by parents and school districts arguing that social media giants should be considered manufacturers of defective products for hooking a generation of young people to social media feeds. Throughout the case, the companies insisted that there is no scientific proof that social media causes mental health issues, suggesting that they are being used as a scapegoat for the multi-faceted emotional issues children face that can have many root causes. For decades, tech companies have avoided legal liability over the content that appears on their sites because of a federal law known as Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act, which says that tech companies are not legally responsible for what their users post. This has made it difficult to bring cases over social media harms to trial. In the Los Angeles case, lawyers took a different approach by focusing on how tech companies built their platforms. By taking this tack, the lawyers pursued a case alleging defective design that was able to get around the high bar set by Section 230. It's not what users post, the lawyers argued, but the very architecture of social media platforms. "How do you make a child never put down the phone? Over the course of five weeks, jurors heard from therapists, engineers, tech executives including Zuckerberg, and the plaintiff herself about just how culpable big tech companies should be for contributing to KGM's mental health struggles. Were her issues pre-existing, or exacerbated by her home life, or deepened by social media? Meta and Google fought back by underscoring the emotional and physical abuse her medical records indicated she experienced at home. Lawyers for the tech companies also hammered the point that Kaley's own therapist never documented that social media use was a factor in her mental health problems. She developed depression and body dysmorphia, she said, as she continuously compared herself to others and used beauty filters to enhance her appearance. She so craved the validation of social media, she said, that she would run off to the bathroom at school to check the number of "likes" her posts had received. She testified that it was hard to concentrate on school because all she wanted to do was stay glued to her social media feeds. Lanier, who is known for trotting out large exhibits for trial spectacle, closed his questioning of Zuckerberg with one such display. Zuckerberg looked on, as Lanier peppered him with questions about how and why a girl under the age of 13, Meta's minimum age to create an account, was able to post to the app so obsessively. "I don't naysay the opportunity to make money," Lanier said. 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