LOS ANGELES – In closing arguments in the first social media addiction case to bring tech giants to trial, a plaintiff’s attorney slammed social media for profiting from users’ attention, likening their features to a Trojan horse.
The plaintiff, identified in court as Kaley and in her original documents, KGM, is at the center of a bellwether case that could set a legal precedent for whether social media is responsible for causing mental health problems in children.
His lawsuit accuses social media companies of deliberately designing their platforms to appeal to children for profit. KGM, who was a minor at the time of the incidents in his case, testified last month that his incessant use of social media “has taken a toll on him. [her] confidence.”
“How do you get a child to not put down the phone? That’s called addiction engineering. They invented it, they put these features in the phones,” KGM attorney Mark Lanier said in court Thursday. “These are Trojan horses: they look amazing and go down … but you invite them and take over.”
Lanier compared the endless scrolling of Instagram and YouTube’s autoplay to free tortilla chips at a restaurant. He noted that engagement metrics and notifications keep users connected, adding that teenagers struggle to control their usage because they crave social approval and lack the determination that an adult might have.
“What’s going on, dad, you’re so stupid?” he said of the major social networks. “The attention economy. They make money by taking your attention… Every second [K.G.M.] they spend on YouTube or Instagram the second they can sell to an advertiser.”
The KGM lawsuit is the first in a consolidated group of lawsuits against Instagram, YouTube, TikTok and Snap by more than 1,600 plaintiffs, including more than 350 families and more than 250 school districts. Plaintiffs accuse tech companies of intentionally designing addictive products that are harmful to the mental health of young users.
Social media platforms have historically been protected by Section 230, a provision added to the Communications Act of 1934 that says internet companies are not responsible for posting content users have posted. TikTok and Snap reached settlements with KGM before the trial, but remain defendants in a series of similar lawsuits expected to go to trial this year.
If the jury’s decision is in favor of KGM, the companies may face damages to be determined by the jury. That may set the tone for whether they choose to fight or settle future cases.
Representatives of Meta, which owns Instagram and Facebook, and YouTube have denied that their apps are intentionally dangerous and addictive to young users.
YouTube’s vice president of engineering, Christos Goodrow, previously testified that the video platform was “not designed to maximize time.”
Instagram head Adam Mosseri also came under fire for the platform’s beauty filters, which KGM later said used in a way that negatively affected his self-esteem. Mosseri pointed out that Instagram has decided to ban “posts that promote plastic surgery.”
And Meta disputed allegations that the social media landscape contributed to KGM’s mental health challenges as a child. A spokesperson for the company said the plaintiff “faced significant challenges” when “none of his therapists identified social media as the cause.”
“Her records show significant emotional and physical abuse, academic struggles and mental health issues, separate from her use of social media. Witnesses hired by her attorney agreed that social media benefited Kaley, and she used it as a way to cope with difficult situations at home,” the spokesperson said. “The evidence does not support reducing a life of hardship to one thing, and our case will continue to emphasize that fact.”
During her testimony last month, KGM disputed the complaints she made about her mother when she was young, telling jurors that her mother was “not perfect but she was trying her best.”
“Everybody makes mistakes,” he said. “I don’t think I would call it abuse or neglect or anything like that.”
As the KGM case draws to a close, Matt Bergman, founder of the Social Media Victims Law Center — which represents about 750 plaintiffs in the California case and nearly 500 in the trial — told reporters Wednesday that just going to trial is a win in itself.
“Win or lose the outcome of this case, victims in the United States have won because we now know that social media companies can and will be held accountable before a fair and impartial judge,” Bergman said. “And in some cases the plaintiffs will succeed, and in others they may not, but we’re just happy with the opportunity to get this far, and there will be many more trials in the future.”
