Meta and Google, the parent company of YouTube, were found liable for harming a woman’s mental health due to addictive design features, a California jury found in a landmark decision on Wednesday, just one day after a jury in New Mexico ordered the Facebook parent company to pay $375 million for enabling child exploitation and misleading the users about safety features.
Key Facts
- Meta and Google are liable to pay $3 million in damages to the plaintiff, only identified as a 20-year-old woman named K.G.M., who said she became addicted to the two companies’ apps due to addictive features.
- Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, was ordered to pay out 70% of the damages, while YouTube was ordered to pay the remaining 30%, the Wall Street Journal reported.
- The lawsuit also named TikTok and Snap, the parent company of Snapchat, as defendants, but both companies settled out of court for undisclosed sums.
- Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg and Instagram chief Adam Mosseri both testified at the trial, where Zuckerberg insisted the company was “building this thing to be a good thing that has value in people’s lives,” Courthouse News reported in February.
- “We respectfully disagree with the verdict and are evaluating our legal options,” Meta spokesperson Francis Brennan told Forbes in a statement, while Google spokesperson José Castañeda said in a separate statement the company disagrees with the verdict and plans to appeal, adding, “this case misunderstands YouTube, which is a responsibly built streaming platform, not a social media site.”
- The verdict did not appear to impact stock prices, Meta shares up slightly (0.46%) and Google parent Alphabet’s down slightly (0.3%).
Key Background
The case brought in California is one of thousands of lawsuits Meta, TikTok, YouTube and Snap are facing in both state and federal courts, a Wall Street Journal review found, amid mounting criticism of social media companies’ detrimental impact on users’ mental health. In a separate trial on Tuesday, a jury in New Mexico also found Meta violated a state unfair trade practices at least 75,000 times, Reuters reported. The company was ordered to pay $375 million in damages. Meta said it also planned to appeal the New Mexico ruling.
Big Number
About 36%. That’s how many teenagers said they were online using a social media or video app “almost constantly,” Pew Research found in a 2025 study. YouTube and TikTok were the most prevalent, with 92% of teenagers saying they visited YouTube at least once, while 68% said the same for TikTok. When the plaintiff, whose lawyers referred to her as “Kaley,” took the stand, she testified that she began using YouTube at age six and Instagram at age nine. “Every single day I was on it, all day long,” Kaley told the court, later saying she couldn’t stop using the apps because “I just can’t be without it.”
Crucial Quote
Speaking at an Axios conference just minutes after the verdict was announced, Meta president and vice chair Dina Powell McCormick reiterated that the company disagreed with the decision and planned to appeal. “I see firsthand how hard the company is trying to ensure there is not harmful content, to ensure that we are empowering parents to the best of our ability,” Powell said, insisting it is “probably something that consumes the leadership’s time in a massive percentage every single day.”
This article was originally published on forbes.com and all figures are in USD.
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