A Los Angeles jury just handed a 20-year-old woman and her family $3 million because she got hooked on Instagram and YouTube as a child. Meta picked up 70% of the tab, and Google the remaining 30%. A separate hearing will determine punitive damages in addition to that. And just like that, we have our first social media addiction verdict in American history.
Kaley G.M. – as she's identified in court – testified that she created YouTube and Instagram accounts at 8 and 9 years old. By her own account, she was on Instagram every single day: first thing in the morning, right after school, and late at night. She says she gave up hobbies. She developed anxiety, depression, and body dysmorphia. TikTok and Snap were also named in the suit but settled before the trial ever started.
The plaintiffs' lawyers argued that design features like infinite scroll were intentionally engineered to keep users addicted, which drove up usage time and padded both companies' bottom lines. And you know what? They may not be wrong about that. Silicon Valley absolutely builds these products to be sticky. That part isn't a conspiracy theory.
But here's where I get off the bus.
An 8-year-old has an Instagram account. A 9-year-old has a YouTube account. And nobody in that courtroom seemed particularly interested in asking how that happened. Because the answer is uncomfortable: her parents allowed it. They handed her the phone, paid the bill, and apparently never once looked up from their own screens long enough to notice their daughter had traded every hobby she had for a dopamine loop.
This case is described as a "bellwether" – legal shorthand for the first domino. There are thousands of similar lawsuits waiting in the wings. If this verdict holds, every parent who handed their 8-year-old an iPhone and forgot about it now has a roadmap to a payday. We are one appellate decision away from the most lucrative parenting failure in American history.
Personal responsibility used to mean something in this country. It meant that when you made a choice – or failed to make one – you owned the outcome. It didn't mean lawyering up and pointing at a corporation because you couldn't be bothered to parent your own child. There are parental controls. There are age restrictions. There are conversations you can have at the dinner table, assuming your family still eats together. None of that requires a law degree or a congressional hearing. It requires showing up.
Meta and Google are not babysitters. They are not parents. They are not responsible for raising your children. And a jury of twelve adults just told every parent in America that it's fine – that you can outsource your job to an algorithm and then sue when the algorithm does exactly what algorithms do.
The mental health fallout for this generation of kids is real, and it's serious. But the solution to that isn't $3 million and a press release. It's parents who are present, paying attention, and willing to say no. That used to be called doing your job. Apparently, it's now called leaving money on the table.
Soad Tabrizi is a licensed marriage and family therapist with a private practice based in Orange County, CA (www.soadtabrizi.com). Soad is also the founder of www.ConservativeCounselors.com.
