US jury finds Meta and Google liable in social media addiction trial
WIBC 9AM-Noon Podcast
WIBC
4.6 • 1.2K Ratings
🗓️ 26 March 2026
⏱️ 8 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | A lot of people are calling it social media's tobacco moment. |
| 0:08.5 | Big tech spent years saying their platforms were harmless, while the internal research |
| 0:14.0 | showed they knew exactly what they were doing. |
| 0:17.1 | The jury agreed this is just the beginning. |
| 0:20.6 | A jury ruled that meta platforms and Google are legally responsible for harming a young user's mental health. This case, it focused on platforms like Instagram and YouTube and the claims they were designed to be addictive, especially for kids. |
| 0:38.6 | There was a plaintiff, a young woman, said she became addicted as a child and claimed that |
| 0:43.5 | the apps contributed to her depression, anxiety, and other issues. |
| 0:48.4 | And the jury agreed. |
| 0:50.7 | They said both of those companies were negligent. |
| 0:53.0 | And they didn't warn their users about the risks and even their design choices played a major role in the harm. |
| 1:01.0 | This is a really big deal and it got some traction in the news media yesterday, but probably not enough for how big of a deal this is because now this was a state level case this was not a |
| 1:12.9 | federal case so this was california so that kind of helps social media companies contain the |
| 1:17.5 | fallout a little bit but what i think you can expect going forward here is uh probably a flood |
| 1:24.9 | of lawsuits that are going to take place here because now they've got some legal precedent. |
| 1:29.4 | And that's a big part of this. Keep in mind here, so much of what happens in a courtroom is legal |
| 1:33.9 | precedent. Okay, what happened when something happened before and what did it look like before? |
| 1:38.0 | And how did those judges rule at that point in time? Social media company specifically, |
| 1:42.7 | this is really one of the first times where they've been |
| 1:46.3 | held liable for these specific problems. And so this is all new. So now you're going to see a ton |
| 1:52.9 | more lawsuits. I'm sure you'll see some federal lawsuits. You know, you're going to see appeals on this. |
| 1:58.0 | But most of what this means going forward, going to be great for lawyers. |
| 2:01.7 | Lawyers are going to do fantastic with all of this, but it's far from settled, that's for sure. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from WIBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of WIBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.

