Author: Jonathan Symcox

The owners of Instagram and YouTube built ‘addiction machines’, a landmark trial has been told in California.

Mark Lanier told a judge and jury in Los Angeles that his client, known as ‘Kaley G.M.’, suffered from mental health issues as a child due to social media addiction.

“These companies built machines designed to addict the brains of children, and they did it on purpose,” he said in his opening address.

However lawyers for Meta – owner of Instagram – and YouTube told the jury that the then-minor’s addiction was caused by other issues in her life.

Attorney Paul Schmidt said she had suffered neglect, physical and verbal abuse, and bullying by her parents. Pointing to records of domestic violence in her family history, he said she had started seeing therapists when she was just three years old.

However Lanier said: “This case is about two of the richest corporations in history who have engineered addiction in children’s brains.

“I’m going to show you the addiction machine that they built, the internal documents that people normally don’t get to see, and emails from [Meta CEO] Mark Zuckerberg [in which he demanded more watch time] and YouTube executives.”

Lanier accused YouTube of taking advantage of busy parents looking for a “digital babysitting service”.

Meta and Google/YouTube maintain they are not responsible for content published by third parties on their platforms.

The six-week trial is the first of potentially many more set to take place around the US this year.

Owners of Snapchat and TikTok both settled with K.G.M. last month.