Today\u2019s verdict in Los Angeles and yesterday\u2019s ruling in New Mexico are landmark victories for families, advocates, and young people everywhere\u2014and a powerful message that justice has caught up to Big Tech.\u00a0<\/p>\n
After years of denial and deflection, a jury has confirmed what parents and experts have said all along: the harm isn\u2019t in parenting, it\u2019s in product design. The systems driving our social media platforms have been built to exploit, not protect, and accountability has finally arrived.<\/p>\n
The products, design choices, and business models at the center of this trial weren\u2019t theoretical\u2014they were weaponized in ways that shaped how young people live, learn, and connect. This case pulled back the curtain on what we have long known: profit is prioritized over protection, transparency is sacrificed for engagement, and the costs fall on children and families.<\/p>\n
In a stunning and unanimous decision, the jury found that Meta and Google were negligent\u2014and that their negligence directly caused harm to a young woman known as Kaley. Even more powerfully, the jury concluded that their actions were carried out with malice, oppression, or fraud. In other words: this wasn\u2019t an accident. It was a choice.<\/p>\n
This verdict is a bellwether\u2014a social media warning label for the world. For the first time, a jury has said, unequivocally, that the way these platforms are designed can cause real harm, and that companies knew it.<\/p>\n
Their answers said it all:\u00a0<\/p>\n
YES \u2013 Meta and Google were negligent in the design or operation of Instagram and YouTube.<\/p>\n
YES \u2013 This negligence was a substantial factor in causing harm to Kaley.\u00a0<\/p>\n
YES \u2013 Meta and Google knew that the design or operation of Instagram and Youtube posed dangers when used by a child.<\/p>\n
YES \u2013 Meta and Google knew that users would not fully recognize those dangers.<\/p>\n
YES \u2013 Meta and Google failed to adequately warn users of the risks.<\/p>\n
YES \u2013 A reasonable platform designer or operator would have provided warnings or guidance on safe use.<\/p>\n
YES \u2013 Meta and Google\u2019s failure to warn was a substantial factor in causing harm to Kaley.<\/p>\n
These findings apply to both Instagram and Youtube. They validate the truth so many families have spoken for years\u2014and prove, in a court of law, that the blame lies not with parents or children, but with platforms that engineered addiction and ignored warnings.<\/p>\n
Archewell Philanthropies is grateful to the families, experts, and advocates, and to The Parents Network, whose collective voice and shared strength have transformed grief into action, for bringing this truth to light. Their courage in exposing what Big Tech refused to admit has changed the conversation about tech accountability forever.<\/p>\n
The floodgates are now open. There will be more cases, more demands for reform, and more insistence on responsibility. The question is no longer whether social media must change\u2014it\u2019s when, and how fast.<\/p>\n
Frederic J. Brown for Getty Images<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Today\u2019s verdict in Los Angeles and yesterday\u2019s ruling in New Mexico are landmark victories for families, advocates, and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":363080,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[134,554,555,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-363079","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mental-health","tag-health","tag-mental-health","tag-mentalhealth","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363079","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=363079"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363079\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/363080"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=363079"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=363079"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=363079"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}