Nairobi, Kenya- Instagram chief Adam Mosseri is scheduled to testify Wednesday in a Los Angeles courtroom as lawyers try to prove that social media platforms are designed to be addictive to young, vulnerable minds.
The civil trial involves YouTube and Meta, the parent company of Instagram and Facebook, and revolves around allegations from a 20-year-old woman, Kaley G.M., who claims she suffered severe mental harm after becoming addicted to social media as a child.
Addiction Allegations and Company Defense
Kaley started using YouTube at six, joined Instagram at 11, and later moved to Snapchat and TikTok. Lawyers for the plaintiffs argue that YouTube and Meta deliberately engineered features to hook young users for profit.
“This case is about two of the richest corporations in history who have engineered addiction in children’s brains,” plaintiffs’ attorney Mark Lanier told jurors. “They don’t only build apps; they build traps.”
YouTube’s lawyer, Luis Li, countered that the platform is not social media and insisted it is not addictive by design.
He compared the service to Netflix or traditional TV, arguing that user engagement is driven by content quality rather than manipulative design.
“It’s not social media addiction when it’s not social media and it’s not addiction,” Li said during opening remarks, emphasizing that the plaintiff herself is not addicted to YouTube.
Expert Testimony and Broader Implications
Stanford University School of Medicine professor Anna Lembke, the first witness called by the plaintiffs, described social media broadly as a “gateway drug.”
She explained that the part of the brain responsible for impulse control isn’t fully developed until around age 25, leaving teens more susceptible to addictive behavior.
“Typically, the gateway drug is the most easily accessible drug,” Lembke testified, referencing Kaley’s first use of YouTube at age six.
The case is being watched closely as a potential bellwether for hundreds of similar lawsuits in the United States, where social media platforms face claims that they contribute to depression, eating disorders, psychiatric hospitalization, and even suicide among minors.
Lawyers for the plaintiffs are drawing on strategies previously used against the tobacco industry, highlighting alleged corporate knowledge of harm and deliberate product design to maximize addiction.
