The Head of Instagram, Adam Mosseri is set to testify Wednesday in a Los Angeles courtroom as part of a landmark trial accusing social media giants of deliberately designing platforms to be addictive to young minds.
Meta, the parent company of Instagram and Facebook, and YouTube are defendants in the civil trial, which could set a legal precedent on whether social media companies knowingly create addictive products for children.
The case centers on a 20-year-old woman identified as Kaley G.M., who alleges she suffered severe mental harm after becoming addicted to social media as a child. She began using YouTube at six, joined Instagram at 11, and later used Snapchat and TikTok.
During opening remarks, the plaintiff’s attorney Mark Lanier told jurors, “This case is about two of the richest corporations in history who have engineered addiction in children’s brains. They don’t only build apps; they build traps.”
YouTube’s lawyer Luis Li countered that YouTube is not social media and is not addictive. “It’s not social media addiction when it’s not social media, and it’s not addiction,” he argued. He compared YouTube to Netflix or traditional TV, saying it offers free video content driven by quality, not virality.
Stanford University professor Anna Lembke, the first witness for the plaintiffs, testified that she views social media as a drug. “Typically, the gateway drug is the most easily accessible drug,” she said, referring to the plaintiff’s early use of YouTube.
The trial is considered a bellwether case that could influence hundreds of similar lawsuits across the United States accusing social media firms of contributing to depression, eating disorders, and other harms among young users.
