LOS ANGELES — A Los Angeles jury ruled that Instagram and YouTube are addictive, were deliberately engineered to be addictive, and that their owners were negligent in safeguarding children who used them. Meta and Google must pay $6 million in damages to a young woman known as Kaley.

The plaintiff known as Kaley claimed that Instagram and YouTube left her with body dysmorphia, depression, and suicidal thoughts. TikTok and Snap settled their cases before the trial went to court.

Mark Zuckerberg appeared in court in February to defend Meta. Both Meta and Google intend to appeal the verdict.

Meta said that a single app cannot be solely responsible for a teenage mental health crisis. Google said that YouTube is not a social network.

"The era of impunity is over," said Mary Franks, a law professor at George Washington University. "It changed from a product you used to a product that uses you," said Arturo Bejar, a former Instagram employee.

"This verdict, along with many other similar lawsuits against social media companies, signals a shift in how courts view platform design as a set of choices that can carry real legal and social consequences. It opens the door to wider challenges against social media and other technology systems engineered to maximise engagement at the expense of user wellbeing," said Rob Nicholls, an academic at the University of Sydney.

Tech companies in the US are protected by Section 230, which shields them from liability for content published on their platforms. The Senate Commerce Committee held a hearing to discuss Section 230 on Wednesday.

Nearly half of Facebook's worldwide users were aged 18 to 35 in 2025. In December, Australia blocked users under 16 from the largest social media platforms. A proposed amendment to the Children's Schools and Wellbeing Bill would give ministers one year to decide which social media platforms to ban for users under 16.