{"id":898299,"date":"2026-04-10T13:12:12","date_gmt":"2026-04-10T18:12:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2026\/04\/10\/jury-finds-meta-and-youtube-liable-in-landmark-social-media-trial-awards-6-million\/"},"modified":"2026-04-10T13:12:12","modified_gmt":"2026-04-10T18:12:12","slug":"jury-finds-meta-and-youtube-liable-in-landmark-social-media-trial-awards-6-million","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2026\/04\/10\/jury-finds-meta-and-youtube-liable-in-landmark-social-media-trial-awards-6-million\/","title":{"rendered":"Jury finds Meta and YouTube liable in landmark social media trial, awards $6 million"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A California state jury found Meta<\/a> and YouTube<\/a> liable in a landmark social media case on Wednesday, awarding $3 million in compensatory damages to a plaintiff who brought the case and putting the Instagram maker\u2019s liability at 70% and the Google company\u2019s at 30%.<\/p>\n

The jurors later decided to award a total of $3 million in punitive damages, with Meta to pay $2.1 million and YouTube $900,000. The verdict was reached on the jury\u2019s ninth day of deliberation.<\/p>\n

A 2023 complaint accused social media companies of fueling an unprecedented mental health crisis for American children through \u201caddictive and dangerous\u201d products. Plaintiffs accused the companies of deliberately tweaking their products to exploit kids\u2019 undeveloped brains to \u201ccreate compulsive use of their apps.\u201d<\/p>\n

The civil case was brought by several plaintiffs against several companies, but this state court trial,\u00a0which featured testimony<\/a>\u00a0from Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, involved a plaintiff described by her initials as \u201cK.G.M.\u201d in court papers against Instagram and YouTube.<\/p>\n

In the 2023 complaint, K.G.M. said she was a 17-year-old in California who started using social media at a much younger age, though her mother told her not to and used third-party software to try to prevent the daughter\u2019s social media use. The complaint alleged that the corporate defendants designed their products in ways that let kids evade parental controls and that the companies knew, or should\u2019ve known, that K.G.M. was a minor.<\/p>\n

The plaintiff alleged that Instagram\u2019s and other companies\u2019 addictive designs led her to develop \u201ca compulsion to engage with those products nonstop\u201d and to see \u201charmful and depressive content, urging K.G.M. to commit acts of self-harm, as well as harmful social comparison and body image.\u201d<\/p>\n

She alleged that she suffered bullying, depression, anxiety and body dysmorphia\u00a0through Instagram and that Meta did nothing in response to a report about it. \u201cMeta allowed the predatory user to continue harming minor Plaintiff K.G.M., including through the use of explicit images of a minor child,\u201d the complaint said, adding that the company\u2019s \u201cdefective reporting mechanisms and\/or deliberate failure to act caused emotional and mental health harms to K.G.M. in addition to and separate from any third-party conduct.\u201d<\/p>\n

The companies, which have\u00a0denied wrongdoing<\/a>, said Wednesday that they plan to appeal.<\/p>\n

Jillian Frankel contributed from Los Angeles<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Subscribe to the\u00a0<\/strong>Deadline: Legal Newsletter<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0for expert analysis on the top legal stories of the week, including updates from the Supreme Court and developments in the Trump administration\u2019s legal cases.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

\n\t\t\t\t\t\tJordan\u00a0Rubin is the Deadline: Legal Blog writer. He was a prosecutor for the New York County District Attorney\u2019s Office in Manhattan\u00a0and is the author of \u201cBizarro,” a book about the secret war on synthetic drugs. Before he joined MS NOW, he was a legal reporter for Bloomberg Law.\t\t<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A California state jury found Meta and YouTube liable in a landmark social media case on Wednesday, awarding $3 million in compensatory damages to a plaintiff who brought the case and putting the Instagram maker\u2019s liability at 70% and the Google company\u2019s at 30%. The jurors later decided to award a total of $3 million […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":898300,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2915,49,104640],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-898299","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-finds","8":"category-youtube","9":"category-youtube-videos"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/898299","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=898299"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/898299\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/898300"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=898299"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=898299"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=898299"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}