The Social Media Reckoning
Two landmark legal rulings came out last week, both of which will have massive ramifications for years to come.
Last Thursday, a Los Angeles jury ruled that Meta and YouTube were negligent for designing addictive features such as infinite scrolling, autoplaying videos, and beauty filters that contributed to a then-teenage girl’s mental health struggles. The jury determined that Meta was 70% responsible and YouTube was 30% responsible, and awarded her a total of $6 million in damages.
The ruling came shortly after a New Mexico jury found Meta liable for $375 million in damages after the state Atty. Gen. Raúl Torrez alleged that the platform’s features enabled predators and pedophiles to exploit children. A former Meta executive said that, in their experience, 1 in 8 underage Instagram users received unwelcome outreach or harassment through the platform.
Immediately, politicians emerged on cable news programs saying that social media companies need to be reined in. “These verdicts mark an unsurprising breaking point. Negative sentiment toward social media has been building for years, and now it’s finally boiled over,” said one market analyst.
Meta’s stock went down 7% and Google was down 2% on Thursday on a down day for the market generally. Both companies suggested that they were going to appeal the verdicts.
A legal genie has now gotten out of the bottle. Millions of families have been adversely affected by social media platforms over the past number of years, and juries have now upheld that the companies should bear some responsibility. You can easily see lawsuits coming out of the woodwork in every state, and more attorneys general are going to want to burnish their credentials by getting a pound of flesh.
The tech companies are quickly becoming deeply unpopular; if you were a juror and you had a bajillion-dollar tech company on one side and a young woman with an eating disorder or depression on the other, it would be very easy to think “Huh, the money doesn’t mean anything to the company. But it would help the family a lot.” Any public official who holds them to account will seem like a hero too. Meta’s revenue in 2025 was $200 billion and YouTube’s was over $60 billion.
Even as the social media companies are appealing, they’re also advertising their new precautions for teens. I’ve seen the advertisements. You might have too. But the damage has been done, and newly adopted tweaks may only make the legal cases more compelling. Why did they only start making these changes when their feet were held to the fire?
I personally love that this tide has turned. Data was out as early as 2017 that these platforms were terrible for children, teenage girls in particular. Jonathan Haidt’s seminal book, “The Anxious Generation,” has resulted in policy changes in dozens of states. His reaction to these verdicts:
“As of today, we are in a new world: a new era in the fight to protect children from online harms... Big Tech is harming kids on an industrial scale. For years, parents were told these harms were exaggerated, anecdotal, or simply the unavoidable cost of growing up online. Today, a jury affirmed what parents have long known: Meta and YouTube were designed to exploit young people, with devastating consequences... They were negligent and dishonest . . . This is just the beginning. Thousands of cases will follow, bringing Meta, Snap, TikTok, and YouTube to court.”
Lawsuits and new regulations are on tap, and they will materially affect the social media giants. These companies made decisions years ago to maximize engagement and ignore the social and human costs. Those costs are finally coming home to roost, and they will be massive, if far too late for the millions of kids whose lives were changed irrevocably. Our leaders were asleep at the switch, and a generation of kids paid an unthinkable price. For the social media companies, the paying has just gotten started.
Would you believe I started a wireless company to reduce your doomscrolling? Go to noblemobile.com/yang for 3 months off your wireless bill, the best deal around that will also reduce your screen time and help you save for your family. I interview Arthur Brooks on his new book “The Meaning of Your Life Finding Purpose in an Age of Emptiness“ on the podcast this week. The Hudson Valley Ideas Fest returns to Rosendale, NY on April 25th. Go outside and look up.