At Landmark Trial, Expert Says Social Media Hooks Teens Hardest

As lawyer Mark Lanier flashed a cartoon road sign reading “Science of Addiction” on a large screen inside a Los Angeles courtroom Tuesday, Dr. Anna Lembke walked jurors through what she described as the four “C’s” of addiction: loss of control, cravings, compulsions, and consequences.

Called as the first witness in a closely watched trial over claims Meta and YouTube negligently designed platforms that were addictive to children, Lembke, the medical director of Stanford University’s addiction medicine program and the author of the best-selling book Dopamine Nation, said young users’ brains are “especially vulnerable” to problems associated with those four traits. The reason, she told jurors, is that adolescents’ prefrontal cortices are not yet fully integrated with deeper midbrain systems that regulate behavior.

“They’re not fully developed,” she said. “There’s a lack of communication between the brakes and the accelerator, which is why teenagers will often take risks that they shouldn’t and fail to appreciate future consequences. It’s why they’re more vulnerable to addictions.” Social media, she added, has “drugified” connection, validation, and novelty. “The younger the exposure, generally speaking, the greater the risk” of getting hooked, she said.

Testifying for K.G.M., the plaintiff in the case who says she became compulsively attached to social media as a child and suffered lasting harm, Lembke said that, in her professional opinion, Instagram and YouTube are inherently addictive products thanks to “potent” design features including autoplay, notifications that she said can “trigger” compulsive use, and “endless scroll that never ends, with no bottom to it.” For children, she said, easy access is baked into the platforms’ design despite company claims to the contrary.

“Instagram and YouTube provide 24/7, effectively limitless, frictionless access to their products, with ineffective age verification and ineffective parental controls,” Lembke told jurors. “It’s clear parents, by and large, are not using them because they’re difficult to navigate, and kids can get around them.” She added that she had treated more patients with social media addiction than she could recall.

Lembke’s testimony came on the second day of the trial brought by K.G.M., a now 20-year-old California woman who says she experienced anxiety, body dysmorphia, self-harm, and suicidal ideation after developing a dangerous dependence on Instagram and YouTube. K.G.M. is one of thousands of plaintiffs who have filed personal-injury lawsuits against major social media companies whose cases have been coordinated into a mass-tort proceeding. K.G.M.’s case was selected to go first, but the outcome will not be binding on cases that follow.

On Monday, Lanier delivered his opening statement, followed by lawyers for Meta, which owns Instagram, and Google, which owns YouTube. Lanier told jurors the evidence would show the companies created apps that functioned as “digital casinos” knowingly marketed to children.

“Imagine a slot machine that fits into your pocket,” he said. “It doesn’t require you to read. It doesn’t require you to type. It’s just one physical motion — the swipe. This motion is the handle of a slot machine.” The reward, he said, isn’t money but a “dopamine hit” in the form of likes or unexpected videos. (In her testimony, Lembke described dopamine as a brain chemical tied to pleasure, reward, and motivation that reinforces behavior.)

“They didn’t just build apps, they built traps,” Lanier told jurors. “They didn’t want users. They wanted addicts. They didn’t want time spent, they wanted control. This was no accident. This was addiction by design.”

When it was his turn, Meta’s lead lawyer, Paul Schmidt, framed the plaintiff’s struggles as the result of tragic family circumstances rather than platform design. He said medical records would show K.G.M. witnessed domestic violence in her home at age three and later experienced anxiety and depression tied to her parents’ divorce and what she described as feelings of “abandonment.”

“The struggles she’s had — they go all the way back. They’re lifelong,” Schmidt said. He told jurors K.G.M. received an iPod Touch at age six and a string of future devices with little oversight from her parents. He said K.G.M.’s longtime therapist testified in a deposition that K.G.M. “never reported” social media addiction as an issue. Meta, he added, acted on research and created tools, including time-management features and opt-out controls, intended to address problematic use.

YouTube’s lawyer, Luis Li, told jurors Tuesday that the platform has become the largest streaming service in the United States, surpassing cable television and even Netflix. He said 94 percent of teachers use it in their lessons and that YouTube returns more than half of its advertising revenue to creators. When YouTube Kids launched in 2015, he said, the company worked to steer children away from their parents’ feeds toward the more child-oriented product. Like Schmidt, Li noted that the plaintiff received “device after device after device” growing up, suggesting any alleged harm stemmed from parental decisions rather than a defective product.

In her testimony, Lembke said children facing challenges are often at greatest risk of addictive social media use. “We are very prone to narratives that say kids who use a lot of social media are kids who would have been messed up anyway,” she testified. “The truth of the matter is that even if those kids are really troubled kids from troubled homes, who would have had challenges no matter what, their addictive use of social media is going to make those mental health challenges worse.”

The doctor also walked jurors through what she described as an internal Meta document, purportedly dated Oct. 29, 2020, that separated users with so-called “existing vulnerabilities” into four groups: “Adolescents; Female; Mental health challenges; and Low socio-economic status.” The graphic, with bullet points and arrows, illustrated what she characterized as a bidirectional feedback loop recognized in addiction medicine.

“People with addictive behaviors are at higher risk of developing other mental health disorders, and people with other mental health disorders are more likely to get addicted,” she said. “Generally speaking, if you struggle with depression, you’re at greater risk of becoming addicted. If you struggle with addiction, you’re at greater risk of becoming depressed.” Children dealing with sleep disturbances, attention deficit disorder, or other mental health conditions tend to face elevated risks of developing addiction, she testified.

Lembke further testified that it would be unusual for a child or teenager to recognize addiction in themselves. Identifying the problem typically requires a trained therapist, she said, and withdrawal symptoms can be severe.

“Sadly, we’re seeing more and more young people who experience not just psychological distress but physical distress when their devices are taken away,” she said. “Some become suicidal in the immediate aftermath and have to be hospitalized. We are seeing this, and we’re seeing it more often.”

Lembke is expected to continue testifying on Friday. Instagram head Adam Mosseri is scheduled to take the stand on Wednesday, and Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg is expected to testify next week.