L.A. social media addiction verdict set to unleash more lawsuits and force changes
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Two of America’s largest tech companies suffered stunning defeats in court this week, sustaining early jolts in what could prove to be a seismic shift in how social media operates amid a new landscape of legal risk.Meta and Google both vowed to appeal verdicts that were handed down by civil juries in Los Angeles County and Santa Fe, N.M., brushing off the losses as a bit of bad luck.But attorney Mark Lanier framed the surprise victory in L.A.
for his client — who alleged Instagram and YouTube were designed to be addictive for young users — as nothing short of a cosmic triumph.“You’ve seen the photographs of Atlas with the world on his shoulders — it’s like that weight’s been set aside,” Lanier said.
“This is a righteous moment.” California The outcome Wednesday in Los Angeles County Superior Court is potentially precedent-setting for thousands of other pending lawsuits nationwide and could reshape how tech companies are held accountable for children’s harm caused by their products.Few experts believed the test case would succeed.Fewer still thought it would spark a reckoning for the tech titans this spring.
But things began to tilt on Feb.27, the day after 20-year-old plaintiff Kaley G.M.
testified in Los Angeles, when a Delaware court ruled insurers were off the hook for the defense of Instagram parent company Meta in her suit and thousands of related cases claiming social media apps hurt kids.Then, on Tuesday, a New Mexico panel awarded $375 million in damages against Meta for child engagement.Less than 24 hours after that, 12 Angelenos delivered $6 million to Kaley G.M.Now, some predict the constellation of rulings could change the fate of social media and rewrite the future of American tort law.
“This is what we’ve all been hoping for,” said Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist and author of “The Anxious Generation.” “If we can win ...