CEO Mark Zuckerberg arrives for a landmark social-media trial in Los Angeles on Feb. 18, in which Meta and YouTube were found liable for harms caused to users.Ryan Sun/The Associated Press
Gus Carlson is a U.S.-based columnist for The Globe and Mail.
Call it the tech-era version of the Twinkie defence, the absurdly effective legal strategy used in the high-profile 1979 Moscone-Milk murder case in which an accused killer beat the rap after his lawyer argued that his addiction to junk food made him do it.
Last week a California woman was awarded US$3-million in damages from Meta META-Q and Alphabet-owned GOOGL-Q YouTube after claiming that the companies’ negligence led to her addiction to their platforms at an early age and contributed to her mental-health issues.
The 20-year-old woman, known only as Kaley during the trial, testified that her use of social media as a child, starting with YouTube when she was 6 and Instagram when she was 9, addicted her to the technology and exacerbated her mental-health struggles, including depression.
The landmark decision, which will influence thousands of other lawsuits pending against social-media providers, is about as absurd as the Twinkie trial more than 40 years ago.
In that case, lawyers for Dan White, a man accused of killing San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk, argued that their client’s high-sugar diet, consisting of junk food such as Hostess Twinkies snacks, contributed to his diminished mental capacity and led him to kill the city officials.
Remarkably, it worked. Mr. White was convicted of the lesser charge of manslaughter rather than murder.
It also brings to mind the 1982 case of Ronny Zamora, a 15-year-old Florida youth whose lawyer argued that his client suffered from a case of “television intoxication” from being exposed to violence on television, and as a result was insane when he shot and killed his elderly neighbour after she discovered him burglarizing her home.
For Mr. Zamora, a different time and a different medium – television, not social media – but a similarly twisted thread to explaining away Kaley’s plight.
While Mr. Zamora’s strategy was not as effective as the Twinkie defence – he was convicted of murder – the parallels to the Meta-YouTube case are clear.
If there is favour to be curried – and more important, money to be made – no claim is too outrageous, outlandish or outright nuts. And, pathetically, in our modern victim culture, it’s always someone else’s fault.
And that’s where the decision in the Kaley case should concern every parent, every company and every lawmaker.
The verdict, which comes a day after a New Mexico jury ordered Meta to pay US$375-million for violating consumer protection laws, is being heralded as an inflection point that could shape the future of social media.
Sadly, it probably won’t be heralded as an inflection point to shape the future of parenting, which is where the real problem lies.
Opinion: The Meta ruling on social media’s harm to children was historic. But for parents, what now?
What responsible parent allows their 6-year-old to cruise YouTube unsupervised, and then lets them graduate to Instagram at 9 years old – and then has the audacity to be surprised that their child has been influenced?
Kaley’s addiction to social media, and the mental-health issues that developed are as much the result of parental neglect as corporate negligence.
Still, Los Angeles jurors in the Kaley case decided that Meta and YouTube were negligent in the design or operation of their platforms – and failed to provide adequate warnings about those risks – and that this negligence was a substantial factor in causing harm to her.
Kaley’s lawyers called out specific design features they said were intended to hook young users, such as the infinite nature of feeds, autoplay features and notifications.
Lawyers for Meta and YouTube argued that Kaley’s mental health struggles were tied to her home life and that the platforms provide safety guardrails to minimize risk.
For its part, Meta said in a statement: “We respectfully disagree with the verdict and are evaluating our legal options.”
The case is far from over. The multimillion-dollar verdict is expected to grow, as the jury decided the companies acted with malice, or highly egregious conduct, meaning the trial will now move into a second phase to determine punitive damages.
The most tragic thing about this case is that Kaley is not to blame here. Her struggles are clearly serious and sad.
But the idea that social media alone is to blame for her situation is about as far-fetched as the proposition that a Twinkie-filled diet will drive someone to kill another person.
In the old days of television, the question about parental oversight was: It’s 10 p.m. Do you know where your children are?
Now, the question should be: It’s the social-media era. Do you know where your parents are?