'I stopped engaging' due to Instagram, YouTube, woman tells landmark trial

A young woman, who is suing Meta and Google over what she claims is the addictive nature of social media, has told a jury her childhood years were taken over by her use of Instagram and Youtube.


"I stopped engaging with family because I was spending all my time on social media," said the woman, who is known as KGM or Kaley, to protect her privacy.


She told the court in Los Angeles that she began using YouTube at the age of 6 and Instagram aged 9 and encountered no barriers to prevent her using them despite her young age.


Meta has so far argued that Kaley's excessive use of Instagram was not an addiction and that their platform was not to blame for her ensuing mental health problems.

While much of the court proceedings so far have focused on Instagram and Meta, Google's YouTube is also a defendant in the lawsuit.


TikTok and Snapchat were initially sued as well, but the companies settled shortly before the trial was scheduled to begin. The terms of those settlements were not disclosed.


The result of the trial, which is expected to last until March, could affect thousands of similar lawsuits that have been filed across the US.


Now 20 years old, Kaley told the court that looking at Instagram was "the first thing" she did when she woke up each day and that she continued "all day" until she went to sleep at night, leading to difficulties at school, at home and with her mental health.


She also watched YouTube videos for hours on end, noting that the platform's "autoplay" feature, where a new video starts automatically after the previous one has ended, kept her on it.


Kaley has been diagnosed with body dysmorphia, a condition where people worry excessively about their physical appearance. Asked by her lawyer, Mark Lanier, whether she had suffered such feelings prior to being on social media, Kaley said: "No, I didn't."


Kaley also noted that her first feelings of anxiety and depression arose when she was nine and 10 years old. She was subsequently diagnosed with those disorders as a teenager.


Receiving "likes" and increasing her followers on Instagram and YouTube drove her use of the platforms, Kaley said, giving her a "rush".


Failing to get enough "likes" had left her feeling "insecure" or "ugly" she said.


Kaley's testimony comes a week after she attended court to sit directly across from Mark Zuckerberg, Meta's co-founder and chief executive, as he spent roughly seven hours being questioned by lawyers.


Meta's lawyers have broadly argued that Kaley's struggles with her mental health stemmed from issues with her family life, not her use of Instagram.


Paul Schmidt, a lead lawyer for Meta, pointed during the first day of the trial to statements Kaley had made prior to filing her lawsuit about her home life, including a difficult relationship with her mother that had led to thoughts of self-harm.


Kaley said in court on Thursday that, while her relationship with her mother was difficult at times when she was younger, most arguments stemmed from her use of her iPhone and time spent online and on social media. She insisted that today, she and her mother are close.


Zuckerberg's appearance was the first time the billionaire has ever appeared before a jury.


The debate has centred around whether the platform had strong enough guardrails in place to prevent children under 13 from using it as well as around the evidence for whether social media causes addictive behaviour.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c89kdpjn7eqo