THE NEW YORK TIMES: In landmark trial, one plaintiff says social media harm started at age six

Photos and videos of a young girl posted to YouTube and Instagram flashed across a screen in a Los Angeles courtroom Thursday.

One showed the girl, then a preteen, in her childhood bedroom with her pet Chihuahua. In another, she played guitar and sang a song about being sad.

All were of K.G.M., the 20-year-old plaintiff in a landmark social-media-addiction trial who testified that her life would have been unequivocally better if she had not used YouTube or Instagram.

Clad in a beige sweater and floral dress, the woman explained how her near-constant use of social media, starting around age 6, affected her self-worth and development.

“I just felt like I wanted to be on it all the time,” said the woman, who lives in Chico, California, and, to protect her privacy, was not named. “If I wasn’t on it, I was going to miss out on something.”

K.G.M. took the stand as one of the thousands of young people, schools and state attorneys general who have filed lawsuits against Meta, Snap, TikTok and YouTube. Taking a page from the legal playbook used against Big Tobacco last century, she and others have claimed that social media use can be as addictive and harmful as cigarettes or casino slot machines.

I’m sorry about my ugly appearance

The companies have denied the allegations. A win by K.G.M. or any of the plaintiffs could result in huge monetary penalties and other consequences for the companies.

As the first plaintiff to testify in these bellwether cases, K.G.M. spoke for thousands of teenagers and parents who have accused social media companies of hooking young people. The apps have caused mental health issues that have led to anxiety, depression, eating disorders and self-harm, they claim.

Those concerns have caused dozens of parents, who have said that social media contributed to their children’s deaths, to form groups lobbying for child safety protections. The parents have swarmed Capitol Hill and state legislatures to urge lawmakers to pass new laws. They’ve pushed state attorneys general to prosecute the social media companies.

Some of the parents have sued the companies, and more than a dozen grieving parents have attended K.G.M.’s trial in support.

While the parents failed to push through a landmark federal child safety law last year, Congress has held several child safety hearings and cited their stories. In one in 2024, Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, was forced to stand and apologize to the parents.

K.G.M. sued YouTube, TikTok, Snap and Meta in 2023, claiming she became addicted to the social media sites as a child and experienced anxiety, depression and body-image issues as a result. She settled with Snap and TikTok for undisclosed terms before the trial.

K.G.M., who now works filling online orders at Walmart, graduated from high school in 2023 before majoring in communications at Butte College. She has two dogs and lives with her mother.

On Thursday, she said she started using Instagram when she was 9 — without her mother’s knowledge — and struggled with addiction. She blamed features like beauty filters for causing serious anxiety and body dysmorphia, and detailed how she engaged in self-harm to deal with her depression at age 10.

Social media “made me give up a lot — my hobbies and old interests,” K.G.M. said. “It prevented me from making friends because I was on my phone at school. It caused me to compare myself to other people, and that made me feel very depressed.”

Instagram features — including likes, filters and infinite scroll — and YouTube’s auto play feature for videos contributed to her fixation, she said. Mark Lanier, her lawyer, presented data showing that she had spent 16 hours on Instagram in one day. He also showed the court past YouTube videos where she spoke about her appearance.

“I’m sorry about my ugly appearance,” K.G.M. said in one. “I’m not sure why I look fat in this shirt.”

Meta, which owns Instagram and Facebook, and YouTube, which is owned by Google, have argued in court that social media is no more addictive than television or a book. Harming users would be bad for their businesses in the long run, they added.

Meta’s lawyers have said that some of K.G.M.’s mental health issues were caused by turmoil and abuse at home, and that Instagram could not be held responsible as the sole factor for harm.

On Thursday, Meta’s lawyer, Phyllis Jones, went on the attack, pointing to K.G.M.’s past deposition, family history and own social media posts as evidence that Instagram was not to blame. K.G.M.’s family dynamics with divorced parents, and a mother and father who sometimes yelled at her or hit her, contributed to her mental state, Jones said.

K.G.M. started using Instagram in 2015, around the time she stopped seeing her father, Jones said. The lawyer played video recordings of what appeared to be K.G.M.’s mother yelling at her daughter.

“When ure mom screams at u in public for no reason,” K.G.M. wrote in one 2023 Instagram post.

K.G.M. said she would not categorize her mother’s behavior as “abuse.”

“It was something that was dramatized for me to get attention so I could get more likes and comments,” K.G.M. said. “I used to post stuff like that for a reason.”

Zuckerberg and Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, both took the witness stand this month. They defended Meta, saying the company did everything it could to keep children safe while still respecting the “freedom of expression” of its users.

YouTube has said that it is not a social media app and that K.G.M. spent less than half an hour a day on its app, indicating its features were not addictive.

Late Thursday, Melissa Mills, a lawyer for YouTube, asked K.G.M. about her mother’s awareness of her use of the app. Her mother wasn’t aware every time she watched or uploaded videos on YouTube, K.G.M. said. She sometimes tried to hide her use of the video app, she added.

YouTube’s questioning is expected to resume Friday.

On Wednesday, Lanier questioned one of K.G.M.’s former therapists. He presented medical records that showed K.G.M. was diagnosed with anxiety and body dysmorphia in 2019.

The therapist, Victoria Burke, said K.G.M. would use her Instagram account as an escape from social interactions at school that made her anxious, and that social media addiction could have contributed to her diagnoses. A vice principal at K.G.M.’s school recommended that she delete her social media accounts because she was being bullied, Burke said.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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