Jury Hits Meta, YouTube with $3M for Child Safety

0:00It's March 25. You're listening to Dallas News today, AI-powered local news. A Los Angeles jury just hit Meta and YouTube with a $3 million damages award and a landmark case over child safety. The 20-year-old plaintiff says the platform's addictive designs wrecked her mental health starting from childhood. Meta has to pay 70% or $2.1 million while YouTube covers 30% or $900,000. The woman began using YouTube at 8.6 and Instagram at age 9, spending all day on them. Her lawyers blamed features like endless scrolls, auto-play videos, and push notifications for creating what they called, engineered addiction. This is the first time big tech companies lost a trial like this, focusing on platform design instead of harmful content. Company lawyers argued her issues came from family problems, not the apps, and showed videos of home arguments during the trial. Meta's Mark Zuckerberg and Instagram's Adam Osary testified that social media isn't

1:01meant to hook kids and that underage users break the rules. Tick tock and snap settled before the trial even started, leaving Meta and YouTube as the main targets. This bell-weather verdict could influence thousands of similar lawsuits waiting in the wings. Now the jury moves to a second phase for possible punitive damages that might jack up the total even more. Those are likely coming, but for now, it signals tougher scrutiny on how these apps target young users.