Meta and Google found guilty in addiction trial

Last week a jury in Los Angeles, California awarded $6 million to a woman who sued Meta (owner of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp) and Google (owner of YouTube) for intentionally building addictive platforms (see ADAW https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/adaw.34826 ). The woman, known as Kaley, now 20 years old, said she was harmed by social media as a young child, and now suffers from anxiety and depression. Both companies said they would appeal. “Teen mental health is profoundly complex and cannot be linked to a single app,” A spokesperson for Google said: “This case misunderstands YouTube, which is a responsibly built streaming platform, not a social media site.” Kaley's lawyers said Meta and YouTube build “addiction machines.” The head of Instagram, Adam Mosseri, denied that Kaley's use of the platform (16 hours a day as a teen) evidence of addiction, saying instead that it was “problematic.”