A Los Angeles County jury has concluded that Meta and Google are to pay $6MN in damages after being negligent in how they designed their platforms and for failing to warn users about the associated risks.
The plaintiff, a young woman, explained that her early and prolonged use of Instagram and YouTube contributed to significant mental health challenges that she linked to the platforms’ design features.
This case highlights indirect risks for companies that rely on social media for marketing, branding, or customer service.
The plaintiff’s lead attorney, Mark Lanier of the Lanier Firm, urged the jurors to consider the purpose of punitive damages in light of the companies’ net worths and encourage accountability.
“You can take out a handful, and you’re making no difference,” he said.
“You can take out two handfuls, and you’re making no difference. The last thing in the world they want you to do is focus on what it takes to hold them accountable for what they’ve done.”
Platform Responses to Allegations of Addictive Design
Having filed the case in July 2023, the parent companies of Instagram and YouTube were accused of being liable for harming the mental health of a woman who claimed to be addicted to the two platforms as a child.
This included compulsive behaviors connected to the platforms, including creating extra accounts to inflate likes and followers.
The plaintiff’s attorneys argued that these platforms can contribute to addictive behavior in children, with the plaintiff’s extensive use of these having contributed to her anxiety, depression, and body image issues.
Furthermore, former Meta and Google employees testified that these companies were aware of the risks their platforms posed for children and allegedly did not act decisively.
In response, Meta and Google argued that social media addiction is not a recognized condition, and that their platforms were not designed to be addictive, claiming they were taking steps to improve user experience on their sites.
Whilst acknowledging that internal data had reported some users’ experiences of negative or excessive use cases, the companies did not view this behavior as addictive, with Google arguing that YouTube did not count as a social media platform.
This ruling increases pressure on other social media companies currently facing claims that their design choices directly contributed to youth mental health harms.
In a similar lawsuit earlier this week, a jury in New Mexico found that Meta had violated state consumer protection laws by misleading users about the safety levels of its social media platforms, having to pay $375MN in civil penalties.
This string of legal action cases against social media companies highlights broader claims where these businesses have not sufficiently protected users and enterprises that use their platforms.
Social Media Sites are Getting Less Predictable
For B2B companies, these lawsuits signals that social platforms are becoming less predictable when platform owners do not disclose the safety levels of their services.
Whilst online community platforms on social sites can create a wider audience base, organizations must factor in the risks before deploying customer engagement strategies on these platforms.
Social media platforms will typically determine how content appears and how users interact with features such as autoplay, infinite scroll, or algorithmic recommendations.
With someone else deciding how feeds work, which notifications appear, and how user data is handled, enterprises are placed further out of control because they cannot influence these mechanisms.
Furthermore, when courts decide that these features contribute to harm, companies that communicate to customers through the same environment have limited control over how users experience content.
This leads to a loss of visibility into which of their products are popular, what impressions customers are having, and what the next stages of the customer journey are.
Reputational Risks Increase
Creating communities and boosting engagement within social media platforms that come under scrutiny can influence public trust and perception of a company, and risk being linked to concerns over mental health.
As a result, B2B clients that value safety and trust in a brand means that association with a disputed platform environment can raise concerns.
Furthermore, if a company does not have full control over its reputation on a site, a negative reflection of the brand can further damage its influence with current and future partners.
Overreliance on these high-risk environments can decrease customer stability and public trust, leading to drops in engagement, shifts in user demographics, and creating strategic risks.
Why Enterprises Need to Switch to Owned Channels
Enterprises could therefore benefit from shifting engagement to owned community channels because these environments provide better stability, control, and clearer safety standards in comparison to social media platforms.
Owned communities allow organizations to set rules, structure the interface, manage data, and shape interactions freely without external control, ensuring that its features cannot be altered without enterprise consent.
When platforms face legal scrutiny or design changes, companies that use them for engagement may experience unprecedented disruption, meaning owned channels are not affected by possible policy changes.
Furthermore, enterprises having control over their own communities allow for higher data protection and privacy standards for its customers, able to ensure clear data governance and control over how data is stored and used.
With a better understanding of how data is used, enterprises can use this to increase transparency between themselves and customers.
Similarly, enterprises can now use this customer data to directly influence how their community platforms run, ensuring experiences for customers are meaningful and safe.
Enterprises can also establish their own moderation rules with owned channels, applying access controls, age restrictions, and onboarding steps to ensure only their target audience receives the relevant content.
As a result, companies that move over to owned communication channels can create stronger customer relationships and support direct interaction, allowing users to engage with the brand, ask questions, join groups, or share feedback, ensuring long term trust.
For long term budget costs, moving brand conversations off social media and onto owned channels removes the need for paid promotion to reach target customers on platforms, allowing organizations to shift their investments away from advertising spend and generate ongoing value through interactions.
By reducing the reliance on social media platforms that frequently face legal and regulatory uncertainty, this helps brands build durable engagement systems that they fully control.
