Meta & YouTube Held Liable in Landmark Social Media Addiction Trial

Big Tech is finally held liable for the harms children suffered while using their dangerous products. Survivor parents celebrate an important win in the David Vs. Goliath effort to hold social media giants accountable

Photo: Kyle Grillot/Bloomberg

(Washington, D.C.) — Parents for Safe Online Spaces (ParentsSOS), a coalition of families who have lost children due to online harms, issued the following statement after the jury reached a verdict in the landmark social media addiction trial in Los Angeles against Meta and YouTube:

“We parents who have experienced the unimaginable – the death of a child because of social media harms – celebrate this rare and momentous win in the years-long fight to hold Big Tech accountable for the dangers their products pose to our kids. We are thrilled that the jury saw past the routine lies of companies whose own internal research (used brilliantly as evidence in these trials) has proven over and over again: They purposefully design products to addict our kids and continually sidestep their moral obligation to protect minor users. What they have always done instead, of course, is prioritize their billion-dollar bottom lines.

“Finally, a jury said, enough. Social media companies can no longer behave with such callous disregard for the health and well-being of their youngest users. Finally, they are being made to pay a price for their greed.

“We want to applaud the plaintiff and her family who exercised their voices to bring these companies to justice. Their indefatigable spirit and their unwavering bravery all bore fruit today. We cannot thank them enough for helping to honor our children’s lives by taking on this fight and never backing down.

“And yet, this victory is only part of the work. We still need federal legislation like the Senate version of the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) that requires social media platforms to create products that are safe by design. This bill’s transformative duty of care provision would prevent companies from designing their products to addict children, thus providing meaningful safeguards where none now exist.

“We will not stop advocating for KOSA — the gold standard of children’s online safety bills — until it becomes law. We hope that the outcome today gives our leaders in Congress the added incentive they seem to need to do their part: to pass a law that chooses the safety of children over Big Tech’s lobbying dollars once and for all.” ■