Are Big Tech Firms The New Tobacco Companies?

Doomscrollers are familiar with the addictive properties of social media. Should Big Tech companies be legally liable for the way their products affect users’ mental health? A trial underway in California could set an important precedent.

A now-20-year-old plaintiff known in court documents as KGM says Meta and YouTube are “intentionally creating addictive platforms,” said CNN. Her lawsuit said those companies’ algorithmic decisions caused her to “develop anxiety, body dysmorphia and suicidal thoughts” when she was younger. (Snap and TikTok settled her case before it went to trial.) The tech companies have “engineered addiction in children’s brains,” said lawyer Mark Lanier at trial this week. The trial verdict could influence the resolution of 1,500 similar cases around the country, said CNN.

Meta, in particular, has long been “compared to Big Tobacco,” said The Atlantic. Now the company’s day in court has come. Meta’s defense argues researchers have found only “weak and inconsistent correlations” between mental health and social media use. The trial is the company’s “first chance to tell their story to a jury and get a sense of how well those arguments are playing,” said Eric Goldman, a professor at Santa Clara University School of Law, to the outlet.

What did the commentators say?

The “infinite-scroll apps” that loom so large in teen social life “might soon be a thing of the past,” said Casey Newton at Platformer. Millions of children are “bullied and harassed” on social media, or are “introduced to groomers and predators.” Platforms will have a hard time defending themselves from the criticism. American politics may be polarized, but child safety issues are “increasingly the one thing that partisans of every stripe can agree on.” The California trial may force changes, or perhaps some other regulatory action in the near future. What seems clear: “Change is in fact coming.”

Personal injury lawyers “never let a cultural problem go to waste,” said The Wall Street Journal editorial board. It is difficult to prove that social media is at fault for society’s ills when “personal experience, personality and online exposure” all vary by individual. The young woman at the center of the California trial was “exposed to domestic abuse” as a child, perhaps making her more vulnerable. States and countries are already passing legislation to restrict children’s use of social media, and that is how such issues should be addressed. Lawsuits against Big Tech firms “won’t help teens.”

What next?

Meta and YouTube are pushing back, said The Associated Press. Evidence at the trial will show KGM averaged 29 minutes a day on YouTube over a five-year period. That shows that “infinite scroll is not infinite,” said Luis Li, an attorney for YouTube parent company Google, to jurors. But more trials are coming, said the AP, including a federal case in June involving school districts against Big Tech companies. KGM’s trial and the cases that follow will be a “reckoning for social media and youth harms.”