A landmark trial on social media formally began on Monday before a California civil court, where a popular jury must determine whether YouTube or Instagram deliberately designed their platforms to cause addiction in children.
The result could establish a judicial precedent in matters of civil liability of social network operators, until now exempt.
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“This case is about two of the richest corporations in history that have engineered addiction into children’s brains,” plaintiff’s attorney Mark Lanier told jurors in his opening statement.
“I’m going to show you evidence that these companies built machines designed to addict children’s brains, and they did it on purpose,” he added.
The trial in Los Angeles, before Judge Carolyn Kuhl, centers on allegations by a 20-year-old woman, identified as Kaley GM, that she suffered severe mental damage because she became addicted to social media as a child.
The defendants are the technology giants Alphabet, parent company of Google, owner of YouTube, and Meta, owner of Instagram.
The CEO of Meta, Mark Zuckerberg, is called to testify on February 18, and the head of Instagram (Meta’s subsidiary), Adam Mosseri, as of Wednesday.
Justice is also expected to call Neil Mohan, director of YouTube, to testify.
Social media firms are accused in hundreds of lawsuits of leading young users to become addicted to content that has led to depression, eating disorders, psychiatric hospitalizations and even suicides.
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In his opening statement, Lanier presented several internal documents from Google and Meta in support of his thesis, that of intentionality.
One of them, coming from a presentation on Google, mentions “the addiction of Internet users” as its stated objective.
“That is their doctrine,” the lawyer stressed.
Lanier also showed an internal email sent by Zuckerberg that, according to him, urged his teams to reverse the disengagement of younger people on Instagram.
The lawyer recalled the economic model of Meta and Google, largely based on advertising, whose prices depend on influx, that is, the time users spend on the platforms.
“What they are selling to advertisers is not a product,” he explained, “it is access to Kaley,” who will only be present at the hearing to testify and will not attend the rest of the debates.
In contrast, Meta’s lawyer, Paul Schmidt, replied that the deterioration of the plaintiff’s psychological state was due to family problems.
“If you took down Instagram and everything else stayed the same in Kaley’s life, would her life be completely different, or would she still be dealing with the same things she’s dealing with today?” Schmidt asked, referring to the young woman’s medical records, which were included as evidence.
Schmidt detailed that Kaley only mentioned social media in 20 of her 260 therapy sessions, and that she even found Instagram to have a positive effect on her.
YouTube’s lawyers will present their argument to the jury on Tuesday.
The plaintiffs’ lawyers are copying the strategy followed in the 1990s and 2000s against the tobacco industry, which was convicted of offering a harmful product.
The defense tried unsuccessfully to stop the plaintiffs from comparing their platforms to tobacco and other addictive products.
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“This is the first time that a social media company has had to face a jury for causing harm to minors,” Matthew Bergman, founder of the Social Media Victims Law Center, whose team has handled more than 1,000 cases of this type, told AFP.
The technology giants appeal to the United States Communications Decency Act to exempt them from any responsibility for what social media users publish.
However, the plaintiffs in the case maintain that these companies are guilty of maintaining a business model based on algorithms that attract the attention of the population through content with the potential to harm their mental health.
The case is seen as a bellwether for a spate of similar litigation across the United States.
For example, a different trial is due to begin next week in New Mexico, accusing Meta of putting profit before protecting minors from sexual predators.
Social media addiction is the subject of another nationwide class action lawsuit before a federal judge in Oakland, near San Francisco.