Social media firms could be forced to seek ‘Big Tobacco’ style immunity after a landmark court ruling opened the floodgates to lawsuits over their addictive features, writes Kamal Sultan.
Meta and Google have been found liable for harm to a girl’s mental health after she got hooked on the platforms.
Kaley GM, now 20, was awarded $6m (€5.2m) in damages in Los Angeles after she claimed her early use of the technology exacerbated her depression and suicidal thoughts.
Now social media platforms face the prospect of an “avalanche” of claims. More than 10,000 individual claimants and 800 school districts have launched lawsuits in the US arguing platforms – including Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Snapchat and YouTube – set out to keep people addicted.
Experts said tech companies will want to follow the lead of the tobacco industry in the 1990s to try to get “congressional immunity to limit the amount they have to pay out”.
George Washington University Law School professor John Banzhaf described the ruling as “social media’s Big Tobacco moment”, referring to the 1990s scandal when tobacco firms faced a series of trials that held them accountable for knowingly selling harmful products.
“There are already thousands of lawsuits in the pipeline and even more will be brought following this ruling,” he told the Daily Mail.
“It is difficult to fake lung cancer, but a lot easier to say ‘my child was hooked on social media and has all of these emotional problems’.
“A lot of lawyers will scurry to find themselves plaintiffs. They are like sharks – they smell blood and in this case there is lots of blood.”
The young woman told jurors that her near-constant social media use “really affected my self-worth”, saying the apps led her to abandon hobbies, struggle to make friends and constantly measure herself against others.
Laura Marquez-Garrett (3R, gray blazer), plaintiffs’ attorney for SMVLC (Social Media Victims Law Center), gathers with family members of victims as they react to news that the jury has found Meta and YouTube liable in the social media addiction trial. (Photo by Frederic J. Brown / AFP via Getty Images)
Meta argued that she had struggled with her mental health separately from her social media use, pointing to her turbulent home life.
Meta, Google and TikTok were asked to comment.
