What we're missing about the social media verdict

Meta and YouTube were found liable for harming a young user. Here's what you need to know.

Welcome back! I’m Jacqueline Nesi, a psychology professor and mom of three young kids who has spent many more hours learning about personal injury liability than I would have predicted when I decided to become a child psychologist 15 years ago.

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8 min read (sorry! I tried to make it shorter!)

Last week, a jury found Meta and YouTube liable for harm caused to a teenager from using their products.

Here are answers to some of the most common questions I’ve been getting about it.

What happened?

Last Wednesday, the jury delivered their verdict in a landmark trial. A now 20-year-old woman (K.G.M.) sued Meta (including Instagram), TikTok, Snap, and YouTube,¹ claiming that she became addicted to the products as a child, and developed mental health problems as a result.

This lawsuit involved a new legal strategy in cases directed at Big Tech companies: arguing that the companies caused personal injury through defective products.²

What exactly did the jury decide?

In a personal injury case like this one, the jury needed to determine that it is “more likely than not” that the defendant (i.e., the social media companies) were negligent. This means the jury agreed that:

1. The companies had a duty of care to protect kids from harm related to their products

2. The companies failed to do so by designing features they knew were harmful (e.g., infinite scroll, autoplay, beauty filters) and neglecting to warn people about them

3. This failure was a substantial factor in causing harm to K.G.M.

Why is this important?

This is the first time we’ve seen social media companies held liable for harms caused by their products. In the past, they have been shielded by Section 230, a law that protects online platforms from liability for the content people post. In this case, the plaintiff successfully argued that the design of the products themselves (i.e., the features) caused harm.

The companies will appeal the verdict, but if it holds, this will have major implications. There are thousands of other lawsuits following this same playbook slated to go to trial this year. As the financial penalties accumulate, the companies may be forced to make substantial changes to their products to protect young users.

It’s also worth noting that this verdict feels validating for many parents. This is likely most acute for those who believe their children were harmed or even died because of the platforms, many of whom have been advocating for change. For many parents, though, I think there is a sense that, finally, someone is recognizing that it can’t all be on them: the companies themselves need to take responsibility for kids’ safety, too.

Is this social media’s “Big Tobacco moment”?

Yes and no.

Yes, in that we’re seeing the beginnings of a similar legal strategy. The case against Big Tobacco also started with personal injury lawsuits that uncovered evidence of deception (i.e., knowing the product was harmful and hiding it), before moving toward larger class-action cases and, eventually, federal regulation.

No, in that social media and cigarettes are…not the same. Cigarettes have clear negative impacts on physical health for the vast majority of people who smoke them, with a “dose-response” relationship (the more cigarettes smoked, the larger the negative impact on health). There is no way to safely smoke cigarettes, for anyone. This is not the case for social media.³

Was the jury right? Does social media cause mental health problems?

A few years ago, I ran a study with adolescents experiencing suicidal thoughts in an inpatient hospital unit. Many of the patients I spoke to had complex histories of abuse, neglect, bullying, poverty, and other major stressors. Some of these patients used social media in totally benign, unremarkable ways. A few of them, though, were served with an endless feed of suicide-related posts and memes, some romanticizing or minimizing suicide. For those patients, it would be very hard to argue that social media did not contribute to their symptoms, even with everything else going on in their lives.

I absolutely believe that there are some young people out there for whom social media is one factor—among many—in causing or exacerbating symptoms.

So, for the plaintiff K.G.M., is it possible that these social media platforms were one such factor? Yes.

But there’s a “but”?

Of course there is.

Two of the first new vocabulary words you learn when becoming a child psychologist are: multifinality and equifinality.⁴

• Multifinality means that many different mental health outcomes can result from the same experience. For example, two children can experience the exact same circumstances, and one might develop depression, while one might be totally fine.

• Equifinality means that many different experiences can lead to the same outcome. For example, two children with entirely different backgrounds and experiences can both develop depression.

These reinforce a central truth about mental illness: it is idiosyncratic. Its causes differ between people, and for any one person, it is almost never the result of a single cause.

For that reason, I want us to be careful about what we take away from this trial when it comes to understanding causes of mental illness.

It is one thing to say that for some kids, social media is one factor contributing to mental health symptoms. It is another entirely to say that social media is causing mental health problems on a large scale. It is still the case that if you take an average, healthy teen and give them social media, this is highly unlikely to create a mental illness.

Let’s not lose sight of the whole picture, and the many other factors that contribute to mental health, too.

Are features like infinite scroll and auto-play really a problem?

Many social media platforms are designed to keep people, including children, using them for long stretches of time. We know this. If a child is faced with infinite scroll (i.e., a feed that never ends), or auto-play (i.e., videos that automatically play, one after another), they are going to spend more time on a platform than they would if those features did not exist.

Should platforms for children be designed this way? No! When designing products for children, tech companies should be prioritizing kids’ well-being. Social media features that prioritize time spent generally do not do this.

Where this gets complicated is in trying to tease apart the effects of features versus content. For example:

• If every video on TikTok was just me, wide-eyed and reading the statistical analysis portion of my dissertation,⁵ kids would not exactly be “hooked,” even if these videos auto-played or made up an endlessly scrollable feed.

• And if we got rid of every potentially “addictive” feature, but young people were still signing onto Instagram and seeing content that promotes eating disorders, this would be a problem.

These issues, in my opinion, do not mean the jury was wrong in finding the companies liable. It does, though, suggest caution in trying to develop meaningful solutions.

Are those features addictive?

There is, as we sapiens know, much debate in psychology about whether social media use (or, really, any non-substance using behavior outside of gambling) can be called an “addiction.”⁶

Here’s my current take. Are there a small number of people whose social media use is so extreme that it causes significant impairment in their lives, and they are unable to stop using it despite that impairment? Yes. And for those people, maybe addiction is the right word, maybe it’s not, but maybe, it doesn’t matter because it’s still a big problem.

For the vast majority of people (and kids) using social media, though, I do not think addiction is the right word to use. And I worry that by labeling the average kid’s use “addiction,” we are:

(1) ignoring the many different activities they might be doing on social media

(2) removing agency by suggesting that they are incapable of managing social media use, and

(3) pathologizing a behavior, rather than implementing reasonable measures—in our homes, schools, and the products themselves—to address it.

What does all of this mean for parents?

Despite the number of words you just read (skimmed⁷) about this trial, the answer is, actually, not much.

As I said, it makes sense that parents feel validated by the jury’s ruling: finally, it feels like someone is recognizing that parents cannot do this alone. At the same time, the outcome of this trial does not change the research. It does not change the facts.

The risks of social media that we’ve long known about are the same, and so are the basics. For example:

• If you know your teen is vulnerable, you may want to be extra careful.

• If your teen is using social media in moderation, and it does not seem to be affecting them negatively: it probably isn’t.

• For many families, it makes sense to delay introducing social media, and when you do, to go slow, with plenty of oversight.

• When it comes to our kids’ mental health, it’s important to keep the whole picture in mind. Social media may be one piece of the puzzle, but it’s certainly not the whole thing.

This verdict is a crucial moment to shape the conversation about kids and social media. I hope we can use it to come back to what we already know: these products require caution. Let’s be intentional about if and how our kids use them, and let’s hope this is a meaningful step toward change.

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1. Note: Snap and TikTok both settled prior to the start of this trial.

2. Last week also marked the end of another, separate trial against Meta, in which the state of New Mexico successfully sued for misleading the public about the safety of its products in relation to child sexual exploitation.

3. A better analogy for social media, in my opinion, is alcohol. Many people use alcohol without any issues, but for some, it causes serious harm. Another good analogy? Cars. Cars, like social media, are something we use regularly, but which can be very dangerous, especially if used in unsafe ways. In the cases of both alcohol and cars, we have special protections in place for kids–age limits, education, car seats, etc. Ultimately, though, neither of these analogies is perfect because when it comes to the harms of social media, we are talking about mental health. And mental health is complicated (see above).

4. This is also, roughly, the time when you learn that psychologists love to come up with infuriatingly similar names for different phenomena (see: multifinality vs. equifinality, authoritarian vs. authoritative parenting, affect vs. effect). It’s also the time you start questioning the decade of training that lies ahead.

5. Truly, the stuff of nightmares.

6. A full post on the topic of social media “addiction” is in the works. Stay tuned!

7. No judgement!