Social media goes on trial.

From American Public Media, this is Marketplace Tech.

I'm Stephanie Hughes.

A landmark lawsuit is in court this week in Los Angeles.

It accuses social media companies of

intentionally designing their platforms to be addictive, causing harm to children and teenagers'

mental health. The defendants in this case are meta and YouTube. They each say the allegations

are not true. Snap and TikTok reportedly settled. Some are calling this social media's big tobacco moment.

Eric Goldman is co-director of the High Tech Law Institute at Santa Clara University.

He says this is one in a series of lawsuits against the social media giants.

There's a federal court case in California that has thousands of plaintiffs attached to that case.

And that case is scheduled to do bellwether trials later this summer.

That case also has as separate classes of plaintiffs, school districts, state attorneys

general, and Native American tribes.

And then there's also a trial taking place in New Mexico by the New Mexico State Attorney General

that covers the exact same topics as they're being litigated in the California cases.

It just so happens that it's happening in New Mexico State Court.

Am I correct in understanding that the plaintiffs have to prove not just

that kids were harmed by the social media platforms, but that the companies knew they were harming

them? It's actually more complicated than that. The plaintiffs are going to have to show that the

defendants caused the harm. There are many causes to a particular outcome, but the law only

recognizes some of those causes. And that's, I think, going to be a central issue in the case,

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