ÉTATS-UNIS PERSPECTIVE

American media immediately compared the verdict to a 'Big Tobacco moment' for Silicon Valley. On March 25, 2026, a Los Angeles Superior Court jury deliberated for over eight days following a seven-week trial, before ordering Meta and Google to pay $6 million — $3 million in compensatory damages and $3 million in punitive damages — to Kaley, a 20-year-old woman from Chico, California.

Kaley, identified as KGM in court documents, testified that she began using YouTube at age 6 and Instagram at age 9, and was on social media 'all day long' as a child. She suffers from depression, body dysmorphia, and suicidal thoughts that she attributes directly to compulsive platform use. The jury assigned 70% of responsibility to Meta and 30% to Google.

The key legal strategy, as NPR highlighted, was bypassing Section 230 protection by targeting not user-generated content but 'the very architecture of the platforms.' Plaintiffs' lawyers presented internal Meta documents where CEO Mark Zuckerberg and other executives described their efforts to attract children, including an internal memo stating: 'If we wanna win big with teens, we must bring them in as tweens.'

This trial is a bellwether — a test case linked to approximately 2,000 similar lawsuits filed by parents, school districts, and families arguing platforms are 'defective products.' Meta stated 'We respectfully disagree with the verdict and will appeal,' while Google spokesperson Jose Castaneda countered that the verdict 'misrepresents YouTube, which is a responsibly built streaming platform, not a social media site.'