Meta and YouTube found liable of negligence in landmark social media addiction trial

A Los Angeles jury on Wednesday found YouTube and Meta liable of negligence in a landmark trial over whether social media companies should be held accountable for fueling a mental health crisis among children.

The decision comes after more than a week of jury deliberations and a month of testimony from addiction experts, therapists, platform engineers and executives, including Facebook founder and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. The jury deliberated for nearly 44 hours over nine days.

The two separate jury verdict forms included seven questions apiece with regard to the two defendants, Meta and Google-owned YouTube. The questions included whether they were negligent in the design or operation of their platforms. Jurors also found the companies’ negligence was a substantial factor in causing harm to the plaintiff and that they failed to adequately warn of the dangers.

The companies were ordered to pay a total of $3 million in damages — 70% by Meta and 30% by YouTube. The next phase, punitive damages, are penalties levied for malicious misconduct by the defendant, often decided after further jury deliberations following the announcement of a verdict.

Meta and YouTube were the only defendants left after TikTok and Snap, also named as defendants in the lawsuit, each settled before the trial began.

Only nine out of the 12 jurors needed to agree on each count in the civil trial. The jury was not unanimous on some of the counts.

“We respectfully disagree with the verdict and are evaluating our legal options,” a Meta spokesperson said in a statement.

At the center of the trial is a 20-year-old woman, identified as KGM in documents or Kaley, whose attorneys argued that her early use of social media addicted her to the technology and exacerbated depression and suicidal thoughts. She was a minor at the time of the incidents at the center of the lawsuit.

The case, along with two others, has been selected as a bellwether trial, meaning its outcome could impact how thousands of similar lawsuits against social media companies are likely to play out.

Outside the courtroom, families who said their children were harmed by social media waited for court updates. They hugged in celebration when the verdict was announced and told reporters that they feel “vindicated.”

In a joint statement, co-lead counsel for KGM. said the verdict is “a historic moment” for thousands of children and their families.

“But this verdict is bigger than one case,” the lawyers said. “For years, social media companies have profited from targeting children while concealing their addictive and dangerous design features. Today’s verdict is a referendum — from a jury, to an entire industry — that accountability has arrived.”

On Tuesday, a jury in New Mexico found that Meta’s social media platforms were harmful to children, in violation of state statutes, and ordered the company to pay $375 million. Meta officials quickly said they plan to appeal.

A young woman putting big tech on trial is sharing her story. It’s the latest development in a historic lawsuit accusing social media giants Meta and YouTube of harming young users. Keenan Willard reports for NBC4 at 5 p.m. on Feb. 26, 2026.

During the Los Angeles trial, the plaintiff’s attorney Mark Lanier brought out a cupcake in court to visualize a point related to the juror instructions that Judge Carolyn B. Kuhl had enumerated to them earlier Thursday morning. The cupcake Lanier displayed to jurors had very little baking soda in it to cause it to rise, but it was a substantial factor in the baking process, he said.

Lanier began his closing statement by presenting the jurors with an image of a herd of gazelles surrounded by a lion. The lions never go after the strongest or boldest gazelles, he said, but rather target the ones they think are weakest.

“I think that’s what we got in this case,” he said.

Lanier pointed to several internal documents from Meta and YouTube that he said seemed to illustrate a clear internal understanding of the potentially addictive nature of their platforms.

“I don’t naysay the opportunity to make money, but when you’re making money off of kids, you have to do it responsibly,” he said.

Both the defendants and the plaintiff pointed to a turbulent home life for Kaley. Her attorneys said she was preyed upon as a vulnerable user, but attorneys representing Meta and YouTube have argued Kaley turned to their platforms as a coping mechanism or a means of escaping her mental health struggles.

Throughout the trial, Meta argued that Kaley faced significant challenges before she ever used social media. The jury’s only task, a Meta spokesperson said in a statement Thursday, is to “decide if those struggles would have existed without Instagram. Not one of her therapists identified social media as the cause.”

As Lanier went through evidence and testimony presented during the trial, including Kaley’s medical records and testimony, he argued that the young girl wouldn’t have wanted to bring up her persistent social media use at risk of having her phone taken away. She would return to platforms despite being on the receiving end of cyberbullying on them because it was easier for her to endure the bullying than be off the platforms, he said, echoing her testimony from late February.

But Paul Schmidt, an attorney representing Meta, said in his closing statements that Lanier was trying to argue that if Kaley had never used Instagram, her other mental health struggles would be different.

“The facts don’t allow that,” he said, after spending much of his time outlining Kaley’s medical records and her troubled familial relationships. “The evidence has shown just the opposite.”

In a briefing with reporters earlier, a Meta legal spokesperson also said they didn’t believe that youth mental health struggles, both broadly and with Kaley specifically, could be solved through litigation.

Instead of zeroing in on Kaley’s mental health history, the attorneys representing YouTube have consistently argued that it is not a social media platform and that its features are not addictive. YouTube has also frequently made the comparison of its platform to television, emphasizing that it doesn’t have the same social validation features as Instagram and other platforms.

Luis Li, an attorney representing YouTube, emphasized that when Kaley and her mother went through the process to file this lawsuit, they originally did not bring any claims against YouTube. Kaley was an adult when they filed the case and attested under oath that she did not have any claims specifically against the video platform. Li also spoke about how the company had created goals several years ago related to respecting users’ time, attention and overall wellbeing. Both he and Schmidt also outlined the specific safety features and guardrails the respective platforms have available for people to monitor and customize their use. Li said Kaley and her family did not use YouTube Kids, its safety mode or any of their other available tools.

On the stand, Zuckerberg testified that preteens are barred from using his platforms, but conceded that there are minors who break the rules. He also said the company removes users who are underage.