A California state court judge has denied motions by Meta Platforms and Google’s YouTube seeking a new trial after a jury found them liable for designing social media platforms that are harmful to young people. According to a report published by Reuters, Los Angeles Superior Court judge Carolyn Kuhl ruled on the motions on Tuesday, as per the court documents. The order stating her ruling and explaining her reasoning was not immediately available. The companies had sought a new trial after a jury found them negligent and imposed a $6 million in damages.
What Happened In The Past?
The case began when a young woman named Kaley filed a case against Instagram and YouTube, alleging that she became addicted to the platforms as a child. She stated that the design features of these platforms, including autoplay, notifications, and infinite scrolling, boosted her compulsive use of apps and pushed her into mental health issues like anxiety and depression. The jury in this case found Meta liable for $4.2 million in damages and Google for $1.8 million. This could also be dubbed as the first major case to reach a jury verdict against Google and Meta.
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The landmark verdict suggested that Meta and Google’s YouTube behaved in a negligent manner by designing platforms that harmed young users. For those unaware, this case is viewed as a test case for more than 5,000 social media addiction lawsuits pending in California state and federal courts against Snap, TikTok, Meta, and Google.
As for the impact, the verdict will work as a motivation for all those who have been looking to file addiction cases against social media platforms, and this could create more trouble for these tech giants. Apart from that, the government could also intervene to pause or limit features like infinite scrolling, autoplay videos, and more.
