{"id":855844,"date":"2026-03-28T10:20:14","date_gmt":"2026-03-28T10:20:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/855844\/"},"modified":"2026-03-28T10:20:14","modified_gmt":"2026-03-28T10:20:14","slug":"the-era-of-invincibility-is-over-the-week-big-tech-was-brought-to-heel-social-media","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/855844\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018The era of invincibility is over\u2019: the week big tech was brought to heel | Social media"},"content":{"rendered":"

The young woman at the heart of what has been called the tech industry\u2019s \u201cbig tobacco\u201d moment was on YouTube<\/a> at six and Instagram by nine. More than a decade later, she says, she still can\u2019t live without the social media she became addicted to.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can\u2019t, it\u2019s too hard to be without it,\u201d Kaley, now 20, told a jury at Los Angeles\u2019 superior court. This week, five men and seven women handed down a verdict<\/a> on the design of two of the world\u2019s most popular apps that vindicated Kaley\u2019s position.<\/p>\n

The ruling sent shockwaves through Silicon Valley and sparked hope among families and child safety campaigners that change may finally be coming to social media. Mark Zuckerberg\u2019s Meta and Google\u2019s YouTube were found liable for deliberately designing addictive products used by Kaley and millions of other young people.<\/p>\n

It was one case centred on the suffering of one young person who became depressed at 10 and self-harmed, but Kaley, referred to by her first name or the initials KGM in order to protect her privacy, was the figurehead for a much bigger fight.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe wanted them to feel it,\u201d one of the jurors explained to reporters. \u201cWe wanted them to realise this was unacceptable.\u201d<\/p>\n

Parents who say they have lost their children because of social media hold up a banner with their names outside the court in Los Angeles. Photograph: Mike Blake\/Reuters<\/p>\n

\u201cThe era of big tech invincibility is over,\u201d said the Tech Oversight Project, a Washington DC watchdog that styles itself as a David to Silicon Valley\u2019s Goliath. Even Prince Harry weighed in: \u201cThe truth has been heard and precedent has been set.\u201d The share prices of Meta and Alphabet<\/a>, Google\u2019s parent company, sank.<\/p>\n

The verdict was the second blow in a week for big tech after Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, was ordered to pay $375m (\u00a3282m)<\/a> by a New Mexico court. A jury found it misled consumers about the safety of its platforms. These had features that \u201cenabled paedophiles and predators to engage in child sexual exploitation\u201d and were intentionally designed to get young people addicted to them, said<\/a> the state\u2019s department of justice.<\/p>\n

At $6m, the damages in the California suit were relatively small, but the consequences of the double verdicts will be much greater. It was a week in which a years-long campaign to shift the balance of power between big tech and children finally seemed to gain momentum.<\/p>\n

Meta, YouTube, Snapchat and TikTok are facing thousands of similar lawsuits in US courts, testing if their platforms were designed to be addictive. If they lose, the damages could be crippling.<\/p>\n

Internationally, governments are starting to curb big tech\u2019s grip on children\u2019s attention. From this weekend, the Indonesian government is following Australia<\/a> in mandating the deactivation of \u201chigh-risk\u201d social media accounts belonging to children under 16. This month Brazil enacted an online safety law<\/a> to protect children against compulsive use, and in the UK the prime minister, Keir Starmer, responded to the LA verdict<\/a> saying: \u201cWe need to do more to protect children.\u201d He cited a potential UK social media ban for under-16s and curbs on addictive features, such as infinite scrolling \u2013 the apparently bottomless supply of new material when a user reaches the end of their feed \u2013 and autoplay videos.<\/p>\n

The geopolitics of tech<\/p>\n

The trials\u2019 verdicts have also coincided with a shift in the geopolitics of tech. A fear of upsetting Donald Trump, held by countries otherwise keen to tighten the leash over social media, seems to be subsiding. Leading figures on the conservative right of the US president\u2019s Republican party are now among some of the most vocal in demanding protections for children.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor a long time governments deferred to the EU and to the United States to set internet policy,\u201d said Matt Kaufman, the head of safety at Roblox, a gaming and messaging platform affected by the Indonesia ban. \u201cNow everybody else is catching up and saying: \u2018We want to do things that are right for our country.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Children playing online games against each other in an alley in Jakarta. Indonesia is to start deactivating underage accounts on \u2018high-risk\u2019 platforms. Photograph: Yasuyoshi Chiba\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

It all means optimism is starting to grow among safety campaigners. Esther Ghey, the mother of murdered British teenager Brianna Ghey<\/a>, who sees many similarities between Kaley\u2019s story and Brianna\u2019s, is hopeful that change is coming.<\/p>\n

\u201cFinally, I think this is going to create a shift,\u201d she told the Guardian after this week\u2019s verdicts.<\/p>\n

Ghey\u2019s daughter was killed in 2023 and she believes social media addiction contributed to her daughter\u2019s mental health issues, leading to her taking risks with her personal safety. Brianna, who was transgender, became isolated like Kaley through heavy use of social media, and suffered from anxiety and body dysmorphia.<\/p>\n

Brianna Ghey. Photograph: Family handout\/PA<\/p>\n

However, a long legal struggle may still lie ahead as tech companies fight back. Meta, a $1.4tn company, said \u201cwe respectfully disagree\u201d with the jury decision and will appeal. \u201cTeen mental health is profoundly complex and cannot be linked to a single app,\u201d it said. Google<\/a> said it would also appeal, adding that the case \u201cmisunderstands YouTube, which is a responsibly built streaming platform, not a social media site\u201d. The matter could ultimately head to the supreme court.<\/p>\n

It was also clear this week that the tech barons retain plenty of political clout. On the same day as the LA verdict, Trump appointed Zuckerberg and the former Google boss Sergey Brin, who remains on the board of the company, to his science and technology council.<\/p>\n

Legal focus on platform, not content<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, the LA case is being considered so important because it advances a new legal theory: that a software product such as a social media app can be defective and cause personal injury.<\/p>\n

Until now, tech platforms have been protected by section 230 of the US Communications Decency Act, which absolves companies of liability for content posted. But the LA verdict found liability with the platform itself, not the content.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is essentially a call to arms to plaintiff lawyers, that they\u2019ve been successful at least once in getting a multimillion-dollar verdict against tech,\u201d said Jessica Nall, a partner at the San Francisco law firm Withers, who represents tech executives.<\/p>\n

The message is: \u201cLet\u2019s go for more.\u201d<\/p>\n

Campaigners are talking about a \u201cbig tobacco moment\u201d \u2013 a parallel to the wave of lawsuits that forced the US cigarette industry to overhaul marketing practices and strike a multibillion-dollar settlement with US states.<\/p>\n

Arturo B\u00e9jar, a Meta whistleblower<\/a> and witness at the New Mexico and California trials, said he hoped Meta would redesign its products, looking again at features like infinite scrolling and \u201clike\u201d buttons.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that one of the most important aspects of these trials is all of the internal documentation that is seeing the light of day, about just how much Meta knew about these harms and misled parents and regulators about it,\u201d said the former senior engineer at Meta. \u201cI hope that galvanises regulators across the world to do what\u2019s needed to make these products demonstrably safe.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the UK, the verdicts reinforced a growing expectation of a ban on under-16s accessing social media. One tech lobbyist said the industry was \u201caware we are moving towards a ban\u201d and could \u201cswallow it\u201d, in part because they did not make much money from children\u2019s accounts. Inside Whitehall, people compare the moment to the ban on indoor smoking nearly 20 years ago, suggesting people will wonder why it didn\u2019t come sooner.<\/p>\n

A London coroner concluded Molly Russell died from an act of self-harm while suffering from depression and the \u2018negative effects of online content\u2019. Photograph: Family handout\/PA<\/p>\n

On Tuesday, the rationale for change was brought into sharp focus at Cadbury Heath primary school in Bristol. The online safety minister, Kanishka Narayan, met a class of 10- and 11-year-olds, all of whom used social media.<\/p>\n

\u201cFour hours and then it\u2019s [like] where\u2019s all that time gone?\u201d said one boy about his YouTube habit. \u201cIt\u2019s just gone, scrolling all the time.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt gets addictive,\u201d said another. \u201cWhen you\u2019re on screens for a long time you just can\u2019t get to sleep and then you\u2019re up to two or three in the morning and then you\u2019ve got school the next day.\u201d<\/p>\n

And yet doubt remains about how \u201caddictive\u201d social media actually is.<\/p>\n

\u201cAlthough we have a wealth of data on children\u2019s screen time and online behaviour, we still know far too little about how these habits affect children\u2019s health, wellbeing and cognitive abilities,\u201d said Chi Onwurah, the chair of the Commons science and technology select committee, which launched an inquiry this week into neuroscience and digital childhoods.<\/p>\n

Limited trials of a social media ban are only just getting under way in the UK and Mark Griffiths, professor emeritus of behavioural addiction at Nottingham Trent University, said: \u201cVery few individuals are genuinely addicted to social media.<\/p>\n

\u201cSocial media companies have incorporated structural characteristics that were designed to keep people on platforms for as long as possible,\u201d he said. \u201cThese features do not affect people equally, but for those who are vulnerable or susceptible, they play a role in the development of problematic use.\u201d<\/p>\n

During the California trial, Instagram\u2019s chief executive, Adam Mosseri, said social media was not \u201cclinically addictive\u201d.<\/p>\n

This could seem like splitting hairs to families who have suffered the worst consequences of social media harms.<\/p>\n

Kaley\u2019s lawyer, Mark Lanier, said features such as notifications and \u201clikes\u201d, autoplay and infinite scroll amounted to \u201cthe engineering of addiction\u201d. \u201cThese are Trojan horses: they look wonderful and great,\u201d he said. \u201cBut you invite them in and they take over.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ian Russell has been campaigning for online safety ever since his teenage daughter Molly Russell<\/a> died from what a coroner concluded was an act of self-harm while suffering from depression and \u201cthe negative effects of online content\u201d. Russell said \u201cnothing has materially changed\u201d at the heart of tech companies in the last nine years. He is sceptical about a social media ban, arguing it could lessen the pressure on tech firms to fix their products.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe now need political will from governments to turn these landmark rulings into a fundamental shift in the business models and features that drive harmful content and keep our children hooked on social media,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Testifying during the LA trial, Zuckerberg admitted<\/a> \u201ca reasonable company should try to help the people that use its services\u201d.<\/p>\n

B\u00e9jar said this week was a moment for the world to enforce that principle.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s now the world\u2019s move,\u201d he said. \u201cThe world needs to demonstrate that, based on all of this knowledge, it can effectively regulate these companies.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The young woman at the heart of what has been called the tech industry\u2019s \u201cbig tobacco\u201d moment was…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":855845,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[13,12,14],"class_list":{"0":"post-855844","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-stories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116306301861881658","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/855844","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=855844"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/855844\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/855845"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=855844"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=855844"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=855844"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}