Landmark US social media ruling a 'turning point in children's online safety'

LA jurors found tech companies such as Facdbook-owner Meta to be both negligent and having failed to provide adequate warnings about the potential dangers of their products.

Two major court rulings against big social media firms in as many days could be a ”turning point in the fight for the safety of children online”, an Irish charity has said.

Cybersafekids hailed the “landmark” verdict after a US jury found Meta, Instagram, and YouTube liable for deliberately designing addictive products that hooked a young user and led to her being harmed.

Jurors found the tech companies to be both negligent and having failed to provide adequate warnings about the potential dangers of their products.

“This is a historic outcome and one that could dramatically shape the resolution of similar lawsuits to come,” said the Irish charity, which has long called for companies to be held to account for harms caused on their platforms.

The jury awarded the plaintiff in the case damages of $6m (€5.2m), with Meta to pay 70% and YouTube the remainder. It took nearly nine days for the Los Angeles jury to reach its verdict.

This lawsuit, over social media’s alleged harm to young people, was the first of its kind to go to trial.

The jury’s verdict came just one day after Meta was ordered to pay $375m (€324m) in civil penalties in a separate lawsuit in New Mexico.

In that case, the jury found the company misled consumers about the safety of its platforms and enabled harm, including child sexual exploitation, against its users. The back-to-back verdicts are the first ever to find Meta liable for how its products affect young people.

In both cases, the firms involved strenuously denied wrongdoing and have said they will appeal the rulings.

“We respectfully disagree with the verdict … Teen mental health is profoundly complex and cannot be linked to a single app,” a Meta spokesperson said on the LA case.

On that case, Cybersafekids said: “This is a landmark week for those of us who have long decried the deeply damaging digital environments to which children have been exposed.

“We must also note that Snapchat and TikTok, two other providers of digital products heavily used by children, chose to settle out of court rather than face a jury in the California case.” 

It pointed out that the verdict represents a “significant departure” from the protections tech companies had frequently used to protect themselves from legal liability.

The charity said the plaintiffs’ legal team focused on how the platforms were deliberately designed, rather than the content on them.

“Whilst the damages awarded represent a mere fraction of the enormous profits these companies continue to generate from users, punitive damages have yet to be determined and may substantially increase the final figure,” Cybersafekids said.

“It is completely unacceptable that these platform providers have been able to benefit so substantially from providing harmful products to children for so long without any real accountability.” 

In Ireland, media regulator Coimisiún na Meán has joined the European Commission in launching investigations into some of the major tech firms, most notably Elon Musk-owned X.

After the recent controversy over the X artificial intelligence tool Grok adhering to requests to remove clothing from photos of people, the EU’s tech chief Henna Virkkunen said sexual deepfakes are a “violent, unacceptable form of degradation” in launching the bloc’s investigation.