Three of the biggest social media companies on the planet — Instagram and Facebook owner Meta, YouTube owner Google and TikTok owner ByteDance — are preparing for a landmark trial that may forever change the social media landscape. The Los Angeles trial, which starts this week, claims that the three platforms deliberately addict and harm children.
The jury selection process will take place this week in Los Angeles County Superior Court and is expected to take a few days. Seventy-five potential jurors will be questioned as part of a process that will last through at least Thursday. This lawsuit will mark the first time Meta, Google and ByteDance will argue their cases in front of a jury.
The lawsuit hinges around “KGM,” a 19-year-old only identified by her initials. KGM states that using social media from an early age led to her becoming addicted to the platforms and experiencing both depression and suicidal thoughts. Central to the suit is the claim that these platforms deliberately made design decisions to make their products addictive to children while maximizing profits. For decades now, social media companies have been protected by the First Amendment, which guarantees freedom of speech, as well as Section 230, a part of the 1996 Communications Decency Act that states “no provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.” If the plaintiffs’ argument is successful, those longstanding protections could falter.
KGM isn’t the only plaintiff in this case; there are two others who are unnamed. According to the AP, these three will stand at the center of this bellwether trial, which will test how child addiction arguments will play out in front of a jury.
Originally, a fourth company was part of the suit — Snapchat owner Snap. That company settled out of court last Tuesday for an undisclosed sum.
This case is the first of several addiction cases against Meta, Snap, Google and ByteDance that are set to go to trial this year. Many of these lawsuits argue that features like personalized algorithms, infinite scrolling and autoplaying have led to social addiction. They also argue that the content presented on these platforms encourages depression, eating disorders and self-harm.
It’s not just the United States that’s been hellbent on regulating social media use among children. Last summer, the U.K. revamped its Online Safety Act, requiring platforms to verify the age of their users. Australia was even more severe, banning social media usage for users under the age of 16.
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