As of March 24, 2026, a Los Angeles jury has not yet reached a verdict in the landmark trial against Meta, Google, Snap, and TikTok over alleged social media harm—despite completing 8 days of deliberations and moving past the liability phase to consider financial damages. The case, brought by 20-year-old Kaley G.M., centers on whether the defendants’ design features—infinite scroll, notifications, and beauty filters—caused compulsive app use leading to mental health damage including addiction and body dysmorphia since childhood. This is the first of over 2,000 similar lawsuits nationwide against the four major social media companies, making its outcome crucial for understanding whether juries will hold these platforms accountable.
The jury’s extended deliberations signal the complexity of proving that social media design directly caused mental harm—a question no jury has definitively answered before in a case of this scale. One jury note indicated difficulty reaching a verdict against one defendant, suggesting internal disagreement about whether all four platforms bear equal responsibility. Meanwhile, a separate verdict in New Mexico just one day earlier (March 24, 2026) found Meta liable for $375 million in connection with child sexual exploitation on its platforms, demonstrating that juries are willing to hold social media companies accountable when presented with compelling evidence—though that case involved a different legal theory than the Los Angeles addiction trial.
Table of Contents
- What Happened in the Los Angeles Social Media Trial?
- How Does the New Mexico Verdict Change the Picture?
- Why Is This Case Considered Major?
- What Specific Claims Is the Jury Considering?
- What Happens If the Jury Reaches an Impasse?
- What Could Damages Look Like?
- What Comes Next for Social Media Litigation?
What Happened in the Los Angeles Social Media Trial?
Kaley G.M.’s lawsuit alleges that she became addicted to Instagram and YouTube starting in childhood due to manipulative design features that the platforms deliberately engineered to maximize engagement and user time spent. The defendants—Meta (which owns Instagram), Google (which owns YouTube), Snap (Snapchat), and TikTok—are accused of knowingly using infinite scroll, algorithmic recommendations, notifications, and beauty filter features that exploited her developing brain’s vulnerability to behavioral addiction. The plaintiff claims these design choices caused her to develop body dysmorphia and mental health disorders, and she is seeking damages for the harm. The jury has been deliberating for 8 days and has progressed beyond determining whether the platforms are liable (the first phase) to evaluating how much they should pay if found liable—suggesting at least some jurors believe liability has been established.
However, the jury’s struggle to reach unanimity raises important questions about the strength of proving causation in social media harm cases. While expert testimony on addiction science and brain development likely supported Kaley’s claims, the defendants’ legal teams presumably argued that other factors—peer pressure, family circumstances, genetic predisposition to anxiety—could explain her mental health struggles. This is the key tension: social media platforms may contribute to harm, but proving they alone caused it requires the jury to exclude other possible causes. The extended deliberation period suggests jurors are grappling with exactly this question.
How Does the New Mexico Verdict Change the Picture?
On the same day the Los Angeles jury remained undecided, a jury in New Mexico returned a verdict finding meta liable for $375 million related to child sexual exploitation on Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. This represents the first time a jury has held a social media company liable for harming underage users in a major case, but the legal theory differs from the Los Angeles addiction trial: New Mexico jurors found Meta violated state consumer protection law by enabling child sexual exploitation rather than by designing addictive features. The New Mexico jury reached this verdict in approximately one day, far faster than the Los Angeles panel, suggesting the evidence of harm was more straightforward or legally clearer.
What the New Mexico case demonstrates is that juries will hold social media platforms financially accountable when presented with evidence of serious harm to minors—but the type of harm matters legally. Addiction and mental health injury are harder to prove and attribute solely to platform design, whereas helping exploitation involves showing the platforms knew about or failed to prevent specific criminal behavior. This distinction means the Los Angeles jury may find liability but struggle with damages (how much money), or they may find that while social media is harmful, the platforms’ design choices don’t legally constitute wrongdoing under California law. A verdict in either direction will clarify whether addiction-focused lawsuits have viability going forward.
Why Is This Case Considered Major?
The Los Angeles trial is the first of 2,000+ similar cases nationwide to reach a jury verdict, making it a bellwether for the broader litigation landscape. If Kaley G.M. wins, it establishes a legal template for the thousands of other plaintiffs alleging social media addiction harm, potentially resulting in billions of dollars in settlements. If the jury rules against her, it signals that proving addiction and mental health causation is too difficult under current law, and many other cases may be dismissed or settled for lesser amounts.
Either way, this trial is expected to influence how social media companies design their platforms, how regulators approach platform oversight, and whether social media harm becomes a recognized legal category like tobacco or asbestos injuries. The significance extends beyond money: a verdict holding social media platforms liable would represent a major shift in how courts treat technology companies’ responsibility for user behavior and mental health. For decades, platforms have been protected by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (which shields them from liability for user-generated content) and have argued that user choices about app usage are personal decisions, not platform manipulation. Kaley’s case directly challenges this framing by presenting evidence that the platforms’ algorithmic and design choices override user autonomy, especially for developing brains. A jury accepting this argument would open the door to much stricter regulation and design requirements.
What Specific Claims Is the Jury Considering?
The lawsuit focuses on four key design features: infinite scroll (which removes natural stopping points), algorithmic notifications (which trigger compulsive checking), algorithmic recommendation feeds (which promote content designed to maximize engagement), and beauty filters (which fuel appearance-based anxiety and comparison). Expert witnesses likely testified that these features exploit known vulnerabilities in adolescent brain development, particularly the reward-seeking system and impulse control that don’t fully mature until the mid-20s. Kaley’s team presumably presented brain imaging studies, addiction literature, and internal company documents showing that the platforms knew these features drive compulsive use—a comparison to how tobacco companies knowingly designed addictive cigarettes.
The defendants’ defense likely centered on the fact that many users enjoy social media without developing addiction or mental health disorders, that parental monitoring and education matter, and that Kaley made her own choices about how much time to spend on apps. They may have argued that some defendant (for instance, TikTok) was less responsible than others, which could explain why the jury noted difficulty reaching a verdict against one platform. A limitation of the case is that it relies heavily on one plaintiff’s personal experience rather than statistical evidence that the majority of users are harmed—judges and juries sometimes struggle with individual injury cases when the broader population isn’t uniformly affected.
What Happens If the Jury Reaches an Impasse?
If the jury cannot reach a unanimous verdict after further deliberation, the judge will declare a mistrial, and the case may be retried, settled, or dismissed depending on whether the plaintiff and defendants choose to continue. A mistrial is not a win for the defense—it simply means that particular jury couldn’t agree, and either side can pursue further litigation. In high-profile cases like this, a mistrial often leads to settlement negotiations, as both sides weigh the cost of another trial against the risk of a worse outcome.
However, a mistrial also gives the defendants useful information about which jurors doubted their liability, which could inform strategy in future cases. One important caveat: jury deliberation times vary widely, and extended deliberations don’t necessarily predict a particular outcome. The jury could emerge after two more days with a decisive verdict for the plaintiff, a partial verdict finding some platforms liable but not others, or a defense verdict. The extended timeline primarily signals that this is a close case without clear-cut evidence—exactly what you’d expect when asking a jury to determine causation for mental health harm in a teenager’s life.
What Could Damages Look Like?
The New Mexico verdict of $375 million against Meta provides one data point, but that case involved enabling child sexual exploitation rather than addictive design. If the Los Angeles jury finds Meta, Google, Snap, and TikTok liable, damages could range from tens of millions to potentially over a billion dollars depending on how the jury calculates harm. Typical approaches include: compensatory damages (medical treatment costs, lost wages if Kaley’s condition prevented work) and punitive damages (additional money to punish intentional wrongdoing and deter future behavior).
For a single plaintiff’s case, a jury might award $5 million to $50 million; if the verdict is later used to certify a class action, damages could multiply. However, unlike the New Mexico case where the verdict amount was publicly stated, the Los Angeles jury will first decide liability, and only then calculate damages. If they find liability, the damages phase may require additional testimony about Kaley’s medical costs, lost educational opportunities, and the degree of her mental health impairment.
What Comes Next for Social Media Litigation?
Regardless of the Los Angeles outcome, the verdict will reshape the 2,000+ pending cases. A plaintiff victory would likely accelerate settlements as defendants seek to avoid similar exposure, while a defense verdict would prompt many other lawsuits to be dismissed. Simultaneously, regulators (state attorneys general, the FTC, the EU) are advancing their own investigations into social media design practices, which could result in platform mandates even if civil juries don’t find liability.
Recent federal proposed legislation has also targeted “addictive” design features, suggesting that policy may move faster than litigation. The Los Angeles case also underscores a broader trend: juries are increasingly skeptical of tech companies’ claims about user autonomy and responsibility. The New Mexico verdict on the same day demonstrates that modern juries will hold platforms accountable for harm to minors when presented with evidence of deliberate design or negligent oversight. Whether the jury in the Kaley case chooses addiction and mental health as the basis remains to be seen, but the legal and cultural moment clearly favors holding social media platforms responsible for the effects of their design choices.
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