A panel in Los Angeles ordered Meta and Google to pay $3 million to a 20-year-old woman who accused the tech giants of making her addicted to Instagram and YouTube as a child. The jury of twelve, including seven women and five men, held the companies responsible for designing products with features hampering the plaintiff’s mental health.
The jury instructed Meta to pay 70% of the damages, with the remaining 30% to be paid by Google. An independent lawsuit will decide the financial amount of compensation.
There are still thousands of lawsuits in the United States that allege companies like Meta and Google are accountable for developing addictive products with harmful effects. This case is the first of them to go to trial and is being used as a “bellwether” to provide access to other claimants that hopes to get their claims resolved.
The plaintiff, Kaley G.M., corroborated in February that she opened her YouTube and Instagram accounts when she was 8 and 9, respectively. As a young girl, she started spending all her spare time on Instagram. “I was on it every single day,” she said. “First thing when I woke up, right after school, and then late at night.”
She holds them responsible for giving up her other hobbies and for the fact that these apps led her to suffer from anxiety, depression and body dysmorphia.
READ: Meta, YouTube face court testimony from therapist in social media addiction lawsuit (February 26, 2026)
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg also testified at the trial. The trial was held in Los Angeles Superior Court in downtown L.A. Zuckerberg defended the claims by citing the choices made at Instagram, particularly around beauty filters. He said that they are trying to strike the right balance between potentially harmful content and free expression. Head of Instagram, Adam Mosser, also testified, saying he doubts the chances that a person is addicted to social media apps.
However, the plaintiffs’ lawyers argued that design choices such as “infinite scroll” were intentionally created to keep users hooked on the apps, increasing usage time and ultimately boosting both companies’ bottom lines.
TikTok and Snapchat were also mentioned as defendants in the case, but they resolved before the trial.