Meta Knew They Were Addicting Kids. Now They’re Paying for It.
Question Everything
Brian Reed
4.6 • 707 Ratings
🗓️ 2 April 2026
⏱️ 32 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In the span of two days, juries handed down landmark verdicts against Meta and Google. In New Mexico, a jury ordered Meta to pay the state $375 million for failing to protect young people from predators on Instagram. And in Los Angeles, a jury found that Meta and Google knowingly designed social media platforms that addicted a young girl, causing depression, body dysmorphia, and self-harm.
But as listeners to this show might wonder – isn't suing social media companies supposed to be impossible, because of Section 230?
Brian talks to co-lead counsel in LA, Mariana McConnell, about how they pulled off the win, what this huge verdict means for the internet, and the internal Meta document that said, “Young ones are the best ones.”
Question Everything is a production of KCRW and Placement Theory. And don’t forget to sign up for our newsletter – we’ll be sharing Brian’s extended interview with Mariana McConnell there.
Guests:
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Mariana McConnell, plaintiff's co-lead counsel
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | So paint the scene. |
| 0:06.6 | Where were you when you heard the verdict? |
| 0:09.3 | I was in the courtroom sitting next to our plaintiff, Kaylee, and I'm staring at my papers, trying not to faint or throw up. |
| 0:19.5 | Huge news in recent days. |
| 0:21.5 | A 20-year-old in L.A. |
| 0:23.0 | sued two ginormous tech companies, |
| 0:25.1 | Mehta and Google, |
| 0:26.3 | for intentionally designing social media apps |
| 0:28.5 | that addicted her as a kid, and she won. |
| 0:31.7 | She's known in court just as Kaylee, |
| 0:33.4 | or by her initials, KGM, |
| 0:35.8 | and who I'm talking to here is one of her lead attorneys, |
| 0:38.4 | Mariana McConnell. |
| 0:40.1 | This is a watershed case, the first of many, from many thousands more young people, |
| 0:45.3 | who say apps like Instagram and YouTube, owned by META and Google, respectively, |
| 0:49.1 | deeply harm them as teens, caused or worsened their depression, addiction, suicidal ideation, body dysmorphia, |
| 0:56.5 | self-harm, even sometimes led to suicide. |
| 0:59.6 | Mariana tells me, when the jury filed back into the courtroom after eight days of |
| 1:03.2 | deliberation with their verdict in hand, it was nerve-wracking. |
| 1:06.9 | The foreperson of the jury has the forms in a manila folder and hands them to the judge. |
| 1:12.4 | The judge reviews the forms and then hands it to the clerk who is very nervously reading. |
| 1:18.9 | This was a civil case, so it's not a guilty or not guilty situation. |
... |
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