Anxiety, depression, eating disorders, and death. These can be the consequences for vulnerable kids who get addicted to social media, according to more than 1,000 personal injury lawsuits that seek to punish Meta and other platforms for allegedly prioritizing profits while downplaying child safety risks for years.
Social media companies have faced scrutiny before, with congressional hearings forcing CEOs to apologize, but until now, they’ve never had to convince a jury that they aren’t liable for harming kids.
This week, the first high-profile lawsuit—considered a “bellwether” case that could set meaningful precedent in the hundreds of other complaints—goes to trial. That lawsuit documents the case of a 19-year-old, K.G.M, who hopes the jury will agree that Meta and YouTube caused psychological harm by designing features like infinite scroll and autoplay to push her down a path that she alleged triggered depression, anxiety, self-harm, and suicidality.
TikTok and Snapchat were also targeted by the lawsuit, but both have settled. The Snapchat settlement came last week, while TikTok settled on Tuesday just hours before the trial started, Bloomberg reported.
Fuck settlements in cases like this. Settling should be viewed as admission of guilt.
Yes I know, litigation costs can make settling cheaper for innocent parties, but that is just an indication of how pathetically inadequate the court system is to actually attain justice. We all fucking know these cretins are guilty of even worse than the allegations.