In a landmark ruling, Meta and Google have been held accountable for contributing to a young woman’s social media addiction, resulting in a $3 million damages award. This unprecedented case involved a 20-year-old woman, identified only as Kaley, who argued that these tech giants played a significant role in her dependency on their platforms.
Kaley’s journey into the world of social media began at the tender age of six when she started using YouTube to explore videos about lip gloss and an online children’s game on her iPod Touch. By the age of nine, she had managed to bypass parental controls to join Instagram, despite her mother’s attempts to restrict access.
After an extensive deliberation process that spanned over nine days and involved more than 40 hours of consideration, a jury in California concluded that these tech giants were negligent in how they designed or managed their platforms. The verdict underscored that this negligence significantly contributed to the harm Kaley experienced.
The jury further determined that Meta and Google either knew or should have recognized the potential risks their services posed to minors. It was also noted that the companies failed to provide adequate warnings about these dangers, whereas a responsible platform operator would have taken such preventive measures.
Kaley asserted that her early and prolonged exposure to social media not only fostered an addiction to the technology but also aggravated her mental health challenges. This case sets a new precedent in holding social media companies accountable for the impact of their platforms on young users.
Jurors also found that both companies knew or should have known their services posed a danger to minors, that they failed to adequately warn users of that danger, and that a reasonable platform operator would have done so.
Jurors assigned Meta 70 percent of the responsibility for Kaley’s harm – a $2.1 million share of the compensatory award – and YouTube the remaining 30 percent, or $900,000.
The multimillion-dollar verdict will grow, as the jury decided the companies acted with malice or highly egregious conduct, meaning they will hear new evidence shortly and head back into the deliberation room to decide on punitive damages.
Meta and Google-owned YouTube were the two remaining defendants in the case after TikTok and Snap each settled before the trial began.
Meta CEO and Chairman Mark Zuckerberg (center) leaves the Los Angeles Superior Court after testifying in the landmark social media addiction trial on February 18, 2026
Jurors listened to about a month of lawyers’ arguments, testimony and evidence, and they heard from Kaley, as well as Meta leaders Mark Zuckerberg and Adam Mosseri. YouTube’s CEO, Neal Mohan, was not called in to testify.
Kaley told jurors that her near-constant social media use ‘really affected my self-worth,’ saying the apps led her to abandon hobbies, struggle to make friends and constantly measure herself against others.
In closing arguments, plaintiff attorney Mark Lanier cast the case as a story of corporate greed. He argued that features on the apps were engineered to drive compulsive use among young people.
But the tech giants maintained throughout the trial that Kaley’s mental health struggles had nothing to do with their platforms.
Meta lawyer Paul Schmidt highlighted her turbulent relationship with her mother, playing jurors a recording that appeared to capture her mother yelling and cursing at her.
YouTube disputed how much time Kaley actually spent on its platform, with its attorney telling the court that usage records showed she averaged little more than a minute a day on the very features her lawyers called addictive.
The jury rejected both defenses across all seven questions on each verdict form.
After the guilty verdict rang out, lawyers for Kaley said in a statement: ‘Accountability has arrived.’
A spokesman for Meta said they ‘respectfully disagree’ with the verdict.
Supporters of plaintiff Kaley hold signs outside the courthouse in Los Angeles as she takes the stand on February 25, 2026
Kaley’s lawyers, led by Mark Lanier, were tasked with proving that the tech firms’ negligence was a substantial factor in causing her harm.
They pointed to specific design features on the social media platforms that they said were designed to ‘hook’ young users, like the ‘infinite’ nature of feeds that allowed for an endless supply of content, autoplay features, and even notifications.
The jurors were told not to take into account the content of the posts and videos that Kaley saw on the platforms.
Tech companies are shielded from legal responsibility for content posted on their sites thanks to Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act.
Meta consistently argued that Kaley had struggled with her mental health separate from her social media use, often pointing to her turbulent home life.
Meta also said ‘not one of her therapists identified social media as the cause’ of her mental health issues in a statement following closing arguments.
But the plaintiffs did not have to prove that social media caused Kaley’s struggles – only that it was a ‘substantial factor’ in causing her harm.
YouTube focused less on Kaley’s medical records and mental health history and more on her use of YouTube and the nature of the platform.
They argued that YouTube is not a form of social media, but rather a video platform akin to television, and pointed to her declining YouTube use as she got older.
According to their data, she spent about one minute a day on average watching YouTube Shorts since its inception.
YouTube Shorts, which launched in 2020, is the platform´s section of short-form, vertical videos that have the ‘infinite scroll’ feature the plaintiffs argued was addictive.
Lawyers representing both platforms also consistently pointed to the safety features and guardrails they each have available for people to monitor and customize their use.
The case, along with several others, has been randomly selected as a bellwether trial, meaning its outcome could impact how thousands of similar lawsuits filed against social media companies play out.
Laura Marquez-Garrett, an attorney with the Social Media Victims Law Center and the counsel of record for Kaley, said this trial was ‘a vehicle, not an outcome’ during deliberations.
‘This case is historic no matter what happens because it was the first,’ Marquez-Garrett said, emphasizing the gravity of getting Meta and Google´s internal documents into the public record.
Marquez-Garrett said social media companies are ‘not taking the cancerous talcum powder off the shelves,’ likely in reference to a past case that Lanier and his firm worked on, securing a multi-billion-dollar verdict. ‘And they´re not going to because they´re making too much money killing kids.’
Still, the Social Media Victims Law Center and the parents who trace their children´s deaths or harms back to social media will continue to keep fighting, Marquez-Garrett said, wearing several rubber wristbands in honor of victims that have not come off since the trial began.
The trial was one of several that social media companies face this year and beyond. They are the culmination of years of scrutiny of the platforms over child safety, and whether the companies make them addictive and serve up content that leads to depression, eating disorders or suicide.
Some experts see the reckoning as reminiscent of cases against tobacco and opioid markets, and the plaintiffs hope that social media platforms will see similar outcomes as cigarette makers and drug companies, pharmacies and distributors.
This is a breaking news story. Check back for updates.
