Is the big verdict against social media unfair?

Sorry, the WSJ is completely FOS on this one. The damage social media has inflicted on kids in immeasurable. Anyone who can't see that is a fricken idiots. Zuck and Utube deserve everything they got and will get. Jonathan Haidt has it right.

PS. I also included (see below) an article from this morning's NY Post which presents the other side of this argument.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6NfPHrVilc

The Social-Media Shakedown Begins

The verdict against Meta and YouTube is a victory for the plaintiffs bar, not for children or society.

By The Editorial Board, WSJ

March 25, 2026 5:44 pm ET

Plaintiffs who have filed lawsuits against social media companies hold photos of loved ones outside of the Los Angeles Superior Court on Wednesday Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

A Los Angeles jury on Wednesday held Meta Platforms and Google’s YouTube liable for a 20-year-old woman’s personal troubles. The schadenfreude will be overwhelming—nail the billionaires! But using a novel product liability theory to shake down companies won’t help young people and isn’t a good way to make law.

The $6 million verdict against the two companies is the first of more than 3,000 lawsuits pending in California courts that seek to hold social-media companies liable for the travails of young people. School districts and more than 40 state Attorneys General have also sued for damages to compensate for social problems allegedly caused by the platforms.

Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act protects internet platforms from being held liable for harm caused by user-generated content. But plaintiffs are trying to dodge that law by arguing the platforms were negligent in how they designed their sites. They claim that features like so-called infinite scrolling and “like” buttons—not user posts per se—harm children. Whether this theory trumps Section 230 will be the main issue on appeal, and the platforms have a strong case.

Trial lawyers are also trying to copy the Big Tobacco playbook by arguing that company executives concealed knowledge that their sites are addictive and deleterious to kids. “This case is as easy as ABC,” lead trial attorney Mark Lanier told the jury. “Addicting, brains, children,” adding companies “didn’t just build apps, they built traps.”

The reality is that the link between youth mental health and social media is complicated. Take the 20-year-old plaintiff identified by the initials K.G.M. in the Wednesday case. She said she started using YouTube at age six and Instagram when she was nine. Both require users to be at least 13 years old, so she broke platform rules and bypassed controls.

She says her compulsive use of social media made her “feel very depressed” and that unrealistic images she saw on the platforms made her feel insecure about her appearance. But are platforms supposed to prohibit users from posting photos that might make someone feel depressed or insecure? Sorry, Californians, no posting beach photos in December.

She was also exposed to domestic abuse as a young child, which studies show can increase vulnerability to mental illness. Studies show that parenting plays a critical role in mediating and mitigating the impact of social media. Most children who use social media don’t experience severe problems.

There’s no doubt that increasing teen use of social media and smartphones over the last 15 years has coincided with rising levels of depression, anxiety and other mental illnesses. But it’s hard if not impossible to prove that social media caused any given individual’s troubles, let alone apportion liability among the platforms.

It’s also only recently that social scientists and policy makers have honed in on social media’s impact on youth mental health. The evidence presented at trial that executives purposefully designed the platforms to be addictive was weak. The trial lawyers’ best argument is that platforms should have done more to limit compulsive teen use.

But companies aren’t required to design products to prevent abuse or excessive consumption. A jury in New Mexico on Tuesday nonetheless found Meta liable in a separate case brought by the state AG for $375 million for failing to protect young people from online dangers. The temptation to find corporate scapegoats for social ills is great.

Congress for years has debated legislation to protect teens online, including stronger parental controls and privacy settings. But lawmakers have punted because, well, it’s easier to beat up Big Tech. Some Members also demand that any legislation include a right of private action that would let trial attorneys loot the companies.

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Which is what these lawsuits are really about. Trial lawyers will now use the L.A. verdict in advertisements to recruit more plaintiffs. They may even use the social-media platforms to advertise. Unemployed? Depressed? Spend your Friday nights scrolling? You could make big money by holding billionaires responsible for your problems.

Trial lawyers and juries may figure that Big Tech companies can afford to pay, but extorting companies is certain to have downstream consequences. Meta and Google are spending hundreds of billions of dollars on artificial intelligence this year, which could have positive social impacts such as accelerating treatments for cancer.

The social-media shakedown is a victory for the plaintiffs bar—not for children or society.

Families are fed up with social media — and this week’s legal double whammy is just the beginning for companies like Meta

By Rikki Schlott, NY Post

Published March 25, 2026

Big Tech — and especially Meta, the parent of Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp — has weathered two major legal blows in just two days.

And it’s all an indictment of how fed up regular Americans are. They are angry at the social media companies they believe have robbed them, and their children, of their attention and mental health.

In Los Angeles Wednesday, a 20-year-old girl known as KGM, who said growing up online ruined her life, emerged victorious against Meta and Google — to the tune of $3 million in compensatory damages and an additional $3 million in punitive damages. And Meta is also on the hook for $375 million after a New Mexico jury ruled on Tuesday the company failed to protect kids on their platforms.

“It is a watershed moment in the quest for online accountability,” KGM’s lawyer Matthew Bergman told me. “It is the first time a jury has found that social media is defective as designed … causing real life harm.”

During the trial, the KGM case was said to be a “bellwether” — one that, if it succeeded, could set the landscape for more to follow.

That’s sure to be the case now.

“I think this absolutely could also open up the floodgates,” attorney and author Josh Hammer told me. “Big Tech is now firmly on guard, and they know they cannot continue to lure in vulnerable young Americans with their deliberately addictive algorithms.”

Eric Goldman, professor of law at Santa Clara University in California, pointed out that the New Mexico jury was limited to awarding $5,000 per victim — but “would have awarded more if it could.”

He told me that “other court cases won’t be subjected to such damages caps. If other court cases also result in liability, the potential total damages could be greater than the social media services are worth.”

It’s a staggering prospect.

In the KGM trial, the jury ruled that Meta and YouTube were both liable for negligent design and a failure to warn consumers about dangers.

KGM, who started using YouTube at 6 and joined Instagram at 9, complained of anxiety and depression due to her social media use. She alleges she was subjected to sexual extortion and pummeled with content about self-harm on Instagram.

“I wanted to be on it all the time,” she testified of the app. “If I wasn’t on it, I felt like I was going to miss out on something.” She also reported experiencing body dysmorphia and thoughts of self-harm.

She previously settled with TikTok and Snap, who were also listed as defendants in the suit, for undisclosed sums.

“The family is gratified. They’re exhausted by having to go through this process,” said Bergman, who is also the founder of Social Media Victims Law Center, where he represents 1,500 families. I bet more will be calling him after today.

I’ve recently interviewed several parents who believe they lost their children due to social media. Like Victoria Hinks, who slept outside the court where the KGM trial was held, and whose 16-year-old daughter, Owl, took her own life in 2024.

“When I look through her phone as her [now], I see all the stuff that was being served up really just normalizing depression and glamorizing suicide,” Hinks said of her daughter’s social media accounts. “The ‘skeleton bride diet,’ and these creepy, very anorexic-looking girls, it affected her self-esteem for sure. She made herself throw up. She would ask me, ‘Are my eyes too far apart?’ And, like, where would she even get that?”

This is a massive win for the memory of children like Owl.

On Tuesday, a jury in New Mexico agreed with Attorney General Raul Torrez that Meta failed to protect children against predators online — which the AG’s office demonstrated by going undercover as a tween on social media, only to get bombarded by messages from creeps. Now the company is ordered to pay $375 million in damages.

Torrez predicted the victory in a previous interview with The Post: “I don’t think that the jury [will] be convinced at the end of the day that a company with as many resources as [Meta has] at their disposal has done nearly enough to stop that harm.”

Meta told The Post that they would appeal the decision in New Mexico, and that the jury in the KGM trial was not unanimous. The company said they “respectfully disagree with the verdict and are evaluating our legal options.”

Google spokesman José Castañeda told The Post that the company disagrees with the verdict and plans to appeal. “This case misunderstands YouTube, which is a responsibly built streaming platform, not a social media site,” he added.

The decisions aren’t sitting easy with everyone.

On X, free speech advocate Nico Perino said “the verdict diminishes the responsibility parents have to raise healthy kids” and warned that the ruling could stifle free expression online — valid concerns

Fordham University Law Professor Olivier Sylvain told me he thinks these rulings will encourage platforms to be better.

“I have to assume that these cases will finally force companies to be far more alert and transparent about the downstream effects of their development and design decisions,” Sylvain said.

It’s hard to say yet if these ruling will bring Big Tech to their knees. But they will definitely give social media giants, who previously had every incentive to keep you glued to your devices at any cost, new financial incentive to treat their consumers like actual human beings.