LOS ANGELES — The plaintiff in a landmark social media addiction trial is now expected to take the stand Thursday after other witnesses’ testimony ran overtime Wednesday.
A 20-year-old woman identified in court by her initials, K.G.M., is the first to take major social media companies to trial over the harms she says the tech platforms inflicted on her mental health as a child. Her bellwether case in Los Angeles County Superior Court could set a legal precedent for whether social media platforms are liable for mental health issues in children.
But her anticipated testimony was delayed after lawyers continued questioning K.G.M.’s former therapist, Victoria Burke, into the afternoon. Burke said her former patient experienced body dysmorphia and social phobia as a young teenager.
Burke testified that she doesn’t think social media was the sole driver of K.G.M.’s mental health issues but that she does suspect it played a part.
“I believe it was a contributing factor, not a causation factor,” Burke said of social media’s role in K.G.M.’s anxiety when she worked with her at 13 years old.
The trial is the first in a consolidated group of cases brought against Instagram, YouTube, TikTok and Snap by more than 1,600 plaintiffs, including over 350 families and over 250 school districts. The plaintiffs accuse the tech companies of knowingly designing addictive products harmful to young users’ mental health.
K.G.M., who was a minor at the time of the incidents outlined in her lawsuit, claims that her early use of social media led to addiction and worsened her mental health problems. Her lawsuit alleges that social media companies made deliberate design choices to make their platforms more addictive to children for purposes of profit.
“Defendants know children are in a developmental stage that leaves them particularly vulnerable to the addictive effects of these features,” her lawsuit says. “Defendants target them anyway, in pursuit of additional profit.”
Historically, social media platforms have largely been shielded by Section 230, a provision added to the Communications Act of 1934 that says internet companies aren’t liable for content users post. TikTok and Snap reached settlements with K.G.M. before the trial, but they remain defendants in a series of similar lawsuits expected to go to trial this year.
The lawsuit highlights a variety of features that it claims the platforms use to “exploit children and adolescents,” including “an algorithmically-generated, endless feed to keep users scrolling,” rewards that encourage people to keep using the platform, and “incessant” notifications, as well as “inadequate” measures for age verification and parental control.
“Disconnected ‘Likes’ have replaced the intimacy of adolescent friendships. Mindless scrolling has displaced the creativity of play and sport,” the lawsuit says. “While presented as ‘social,’ [the platforms] have in myriad ways promoted disconnection, disassociation, and a legion of resulting mental and physical harms.”
During the time Burke saw K.G.M. as a teen, she said, her patient would use her phone to avoid social interaction at school while she appeared as though she was “doing something rather than sitting and being perceived as having no friends.”
Asked why she never diagnosed K.G.M. with social media addiction, Burke clarified that it’s not an official diagnosis in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, a standardized guide published by the American Psychiatric Association.
Ahead of K.G.M.’s testimony, youth leaders and parents also held a news conference outside the courtroom in her support.
Lennon Torres of HEAT Initiative, a nonprofit child safety advocacy group, told reporters that she asks for “safety by design,” which includes third-party verification of tech platforms’ safety features.
“Let me be very clear about one thing: The verdict in this case is not the point. That is not justice. This is justice. We have found a microphone and a voice that breaks through their predatory algorithms, and we will be heard.”
Nikki Iyer, a co-chair of Design It For Us, a policy advocacy coalition focused on online platforms, said her generation is not just the most digitally connected but also “the loneliest generation.”
“Growing up, I experienced theft — theft of my attention, theft of my childhood, theft of the childhood of millions,” Iyer said. “And not only was it theft. Big tech took our childhood and renamed it and reshaped it, morphed it into something that they said would benefit us.”
Meta filed opposition to the plaintiff’s bench brief Wednesday, arguing that K.G.M.’s mental health conditions were caused by issues at home rather than the design of social platforms.
The court filing pointed to “numerous examples of ‘emotional abuse and neglect by [Plaintiff’s] mother, including prolonged periods of the silent treatment, frequent name-calling (e.g., ‘dumb,’ ‘stupid’), and mocking of her voice,’ and ‘physical abuse, including hitting the plaintiff.’”
So far during the trial, K.G.M.’s lawyers have called on Instagram head Adam Mosseri, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and YouTube’s vice president of engineering, Cristos Goodrow, to testify before the jury.
Mosseri argued in his defense of Instagram that although excessive use of the app could pose a problem, it’s “important to differentiate between clinical addiction and problematic use.” He added that while it is in Instagram’s business interests to attract as many users as possible, he believes “protecting minors in the long run is good for profit and business.”
Zuckerberg echoed similar sentiments last week, saying Meta prioritizes building “a community that is sustainable” over boosting users’ screen time.
“If you do something that’s not good for people, maybe they’ll spend more time [on Instagram] short term, but if they’re not happy with it, they’re not going to use it over time,” Zuckerberg said in his testimony. “I’m not trying to maximize the amount of time people spend every month.”
Pressed about Meta’s age verification policies, Zuckerberg said that despite Instagram’s longtime policy prohibiting children under 13 from making accounts, he believes there are kids “who lie about their age in order to use the services.”
Meta has developed measures over time to try to detect underage users, Zuckerberg said. But K.G.M.’s attorney, Mark Lanier, noted that the age verification features weren’t available when many children joined Instagram. K.G.M. got on the app at age 9.
“I always wish we could have gotten there sooner,” Zuckerberg said of the safety tools Meta added in recent years.
A spokesperson for Meta said that “the question for the jury in Los Angeles is whether Instagram was a substantial factor in the plaintiff’s mental health struggles. The evidence will show she faced many significant, difficult challenges well before she ever used social media.”
K.G.M. was present during part of Zuckerberg’s testimony but didn’t speak.
Goodrow, who took the stand Monday and Tuesday ahead of K.G.M.’s testimony, was pressed about YouTube’s self-proclaimed “big, hairy, audacious goal” of achieving 1 billion hours of daily watch time by the end of 2016.
“YouTube is not designed to maximize time,” Goodrow said Monday. “Now we measure in time well spent.”
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