Meta and Youtube ‘addict the brains of children’: opening arguments in landmark trial

Tech giants Meta and YouTube face a high-stakes trial over claims they hooked a generation of kids on social media, a case that could spark a digital reckoning.

The landmark trial, which kicked off Monday in Los Angeles, centers on claims the leaders at Instagram and YouTube didn’t just build apps — they built high-tech slot machines designed to hook the developing brains of children for profit.

At the heart of the case is a 19-year-old identified as “K.G.M.,” a young woman who claims the platforms fueled a downward spiral into depression, body dysmorphia, and suicidal thoughts. In his two-hour-long opening statement, her lawyer, Mark Lanier, said the case he is making is as “easy as ABC,” according to the AP.

In this case, ABC stands for “addicting the brains of children.”

Lanier painted a picture of “two of the richest corporations in history” who “engineered addiction” in kids. In his opening, Lanier cited a plethora of internal memo’s, in particular one from Google in the early 2010’s that stated, “[the] goal is not viewership, it’s viewer addiction,” according to the LA Times.

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