Los Angeles Social Media Addiction Case: Tech Giants Face Century-Defining Product Design Trial

On January 27, the Superior Court of Los Angeles, USA, began selecting jury members, marking the start of a landmark trial against the world's largest social media companies. Meta's Instagram, ByteDance's TikTok, and Google's YouTube are accused of intentionally designing addictive products that cause severe harm to the mental health of children and adolescents. More than 1,600 plaintiffs, including over 350 families and more than 250 school districts, are participating in this class-action lawsuit. On the eve of the trial, TikTok and Snap reached settlements with the lead plaintiffs, but Meta and YouTube chose to proceed to court. The core of this case is no longer user-generated content but the platform's product design itself, and its outcome could fundamentally reshape the rules of the trillion-dollar social media industry.

Core of the Case: A Paradigm Shift from Content Responsibility to Design Responsibility

The breakthrough of this lawsuit lies in the fact that the plaintiff's legal strategy successfully circumvented Section 230, which has long protected technology companies. This provision originates from the Communications Decency Act of 1996, stipulating that internet platforms are not liable for content posted by users. However, the plaintiff's attorney in this case, Matthew Bergman, founder of the Social Media Victims Law Center, pointed out that the judge ruled last November that the jury must examine not only the platform's content but also the company's design choices.

The lawsuit compares the design strategies of social media companies to those of the tobacco and gambling industries: The defendants heavily borrowed behavioral and neurobiological techniques used in slot machines, as well as methods once employed by the tobacco industry, intentionally embedding a series of design features in their products aimed at maximizing youth engagement to drive advertising revenue. Specific allegations include infinite scroll, autoplay videos, personalized recommendation algorithms, and notification systems. These features are accused of deliberately exploiting the brain's reward mechanisms, particularly the dopamine release circuits, trapping users—especially adolescents whose prefrontal cortex is still developing—in a cycle of compulsive use.

The first plaintiff is a 19-year-old woman from Chico, California, using the pseudonym K.G.M. Court documents reveal that she began watching YouTube at age 6, started uploading content at 8, owned her first iPhone and registered on Instagram at 9, and began using Snapchat at 13. The complaint alleges that she spent nearly all her waking hours scrolling, posting content, and anxiously monitoring engagement metrics, while also enduring cyberbullying, hateful comments from strangers, and sexually suggestive harassment from adult men. Her mother testified: "When she was that addicted, I couldn't take the phone out of her hands." K.G.M.'s sister stated that if her phone was confiscated, "she would break down as if someone had died." K.G.M. herself testified last year: "I wish I had never downloaded it. I wish I had never gotten into it in the first place."

The Offensive and Defensive Strategies of Tech Giants and the Potential Impact of Internal Evidence

Facing the accusations, both Meta and Google have firmly denied them. A Meta spokesperson expressed strong opposition to these allegations and believes that evidence will demonstrate the company's long-standing commitment to supporting young people. Google spokesperson José Castañeda stated that the accusations against YouTube are completely unfounded and emphasized that providing a safer and healthier experience for young people has always been at the core of their work. In a blog post, Meta argued that attributing youth mental health issues entirely to social media is an oversimplification, overlooking various stress factors such as academic pressure, school safety, socioeconomic challenges, and substance abuse.

However, the most striking aspect of this case is the vast number of internal company documents expected to be unsealed during the trial. Attorney Julia Duncan from the American Justice Association revealed that an already unsealed document shows an Instagram employee referring to the app as a drug, while another employee said, "Haha, we're basically drug dealers." Sasha Haworth, Executive Director of the Tech Oversight Project, believes that TikTok and Snap chose to settle at the last minute precisely because "you don't settle unless you don't want that stuff to be public... The public doesn't really know what's about to be disclosed."

Key witnesses are expected to include the chief executives of multiple companies. Meta's Mark Zuckerberg is anticipated to testify in February, and Instagram head Adam Mosseri may also appear in court. Although Snap's Evan Spiegel was exempt from testifying in the first case due to a settlement, the company remains a defendant in other pending lawsuits. Plaintiff attorney Mark Lanier stated that his ultimate hope is for the trial to bring transparency and accountability, making all confidential records public and allowing the public to see that these companies have been orchestrating an addiction crisis sweeping our nation and the entire world.

Neuroscience and Behavioral Addiction: How Product Design "Hijacks" the Adolescent Brain

From a behavioral science perspective, the mechanisms of social media addiction have been extensively studied. Psychologist Fran Antonet, Director of the Eureka Unit at the Spanish drug rehabilitation agency Projecte Home, analyzed that designs such as infinite scrolling utilize the principle of intermittent reinforcement, which works exactly like a slot machine. Just as you don't know when you'll hit the jackpot, you also don't know what impactful and dopamine-releasing content the next swipe will reveal, trapping you in a continuous cycle of scrolling. He described smartphones as slot machines in your pocket.

Antoinette further explains that the greatest anxiety for addicts is not the moment of receiving a reward, but the anticipation of what is about to happen. The application maintains user dependency by continuously providing novelty, preventing boredom due to tolerance. This leads to a typical pattern of bingeing—since there is no stop signal in the brain, users remain immersed, spending far more time than intended. The deeper issue is that what makes something addictive is often not the content already seen, but the promise that the next content will be better. This design essentially turns users, especially teenagers with strong social needs and developing self-identity, into products optimized by algorithms.

Data shows that a study by Projecte Home on 386 young tech addicts across 23 provinces in Spain found that 88.4% of the addicts live at home, and 97.1% own a mobile phone. 38.8% of them use tech products for 3 to 4 hours daily, with mobile phones being the most commonly used device. These young individuals exhibit aggression, behavioral issues, and difficulties in coexistence, feeling frustrated when tech usage is restricted. They admit to being unable to control their daily usage, lying about their actual screen time, and fearing the loss of their devices. The study concludes that young people are the most susceptible group to fall into the process of use-abuse-addiction.

Industry Earthquake Precursor: An Analogy from Tobacco Litigation to the Global Regulatory Wave

Many observers compare this case to the lawsuits against major tobacco companies in the 1990s. That litigation was eventually settled in 1998, requiring tobacco companies to pay hundreds of billions of dollars in healthcare costs and restricting marketing targeted at minors. The strategies used by the plaintiffs' lawyers are also similar to those in the tobacco cases: focusing on the addictive nature of the product and uncovering internal evidence that the companies were aware of the harm while publicly denying it.

At the same time, legislative and regulatory actions have already begun. In June 2024, New York State signed the Child Safety Act, directly intervening in platform design by restricting addictive algorithmic feeds and prohibiting the sending of nighttime notifications to minors without verifiable parental consent. In December 2025, another law, S4505/A5346, was signed, requiring social media platforms to provide clear and non-skippable warning prompts to minor users based on the latest scientific evidence, treating social media as a product potentially harmful to mental health. In Europe, regulatory bodies are considering the introduction of binding guidelines, clarifying that recommendation systems designed to maximize minors' online time exploit age-related vulnerabilities.

In the United States, attorneys general from over 40 states have filed lawsuits against Meta, accusing the company of exacerbating the youth mental health crisis by intentionally designing features that make children addicted to Instagram and Facebook. TikTok is also facing similar lawsuits in more than a dozen states. Additionally, a federal bellwether trial representing school districts is scheduled to take place in Oakland, California this June.

This trial takes place against the backdrop of a significant shift in public opinion regarding social media. A study by the Pew Research Center last spring revealed that approximately half of teenagers believe social media is harmful to people their age, interfering with sleep and impairing productivity. Nearly one-quarter reported that social media has lowered their academic performance, while one-fifth believe it has harmed their mental health. Experts point out that social media has also contributed to the rise in suicide rates among adolescent girls and the surge in eating disorders following the pandemic.

The trial will last six to eight weeks, and the jury's verdict will not only determine whether the plaintiffs can receive compensation but may also force the platform to redesign its products and establish industry safety standards. Attorney Bergman said: This is a lost generation. This is not an accident, nor a coincidence... it is a design choice. Regardless of the outcome, when the court begins to examine not the content but the design of attention itself, its impact has already extended beyond the Los Angeles courtroom, pointing directly to the core conflict between human behavior and technological ethics in the digital age. This lawsuit is not an endpoint but the beginning of a long journey of accountability.