One Thing: Is This Social Media's Big Tobacco Moment?

CNN 5 Things

CNN

Daily News, News

3.7 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 29 March 2026

⏱️ 25 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

A California jury found Meta and YouTube liable on all counts in a case that accused the tech giants of intentionally addicting a young woman and injuring her mental health. Experts say the landmark decision could open the door to a flood of other litigation that could reshape how these companies operate. But will anything actually change? We also hear from one of the hundreds of other plaintiffs suing social media companies who are hoping this verdict bodes well for them. Note: this episode contains discussions of eating disorders. For more: Listen to CNN’s “Terms of Service” podcast --- Guest: Caroline Koziol & Clare Duffy, CNN Tech Reporter Host: David Rind Producer: Paola Ortiz Showrunner: Felicia Patinkin Photo: Mike Blake/Reuters Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome back to One Thing. I'm David Rind, and we call them tech giants, but some parents and advocates say giants can be slayed.
0:09.0	I also think this is a turning point in the sense that it proves that these companies are not invincible.
0:14.4	Stick around.
0:16.8	Can you tell me when you first signed up for social media as a kid?
0:21.1	Like, how old were you? What do you remember about it?
0:23.6	Yeah, I think the first social media that I downloaded, I was probably 10 or 11 years old, definitely in either...
0:31.6	10 or 11?
0:32.6	Yeah.
0:41.3	Caroline Coziel is a 21-year-old senior at the University of Hartford.
0:47.2	Like she said, she had a very, very early start to social media, much to her parent chagrin.
0:51.4	She says all her friends were on Instagram and she had a serious case of FOMO.
0:55.1	So even though she wasn't allowed to have an account, she made one anyway.
1:06.0	So I was able to make an account on my tablet and bypass the age restriction by just putting in a pretend birthday and then started using. So there was a restriction, but you just put in a fake birthday and on you went.
1:10.0	Right, yeah.
1:10.5	There was no like true check. It was just put it in and that was that.
1:16.6	Fast forward to high school and Caroline is on the swim team when COVID hits. Suddenly she was
1:21.6	spending a lot of time at home but still wanted to keep in shape. So she starts searching for
1:26.2	workouts and healthy recipes on Instagram and TikTok.
1:29.7	But she says what the algorithm served her was not plant forward recipes or simple at-home workouts.
1:35.5	It was way beyond that.
1:38.6	Nothing that I saw was ever a level of moderation.
1:41.8	It was always like extremes.
	...

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