Trial Puts Meta, YouTube Under Scrutiny for Youth Harm (Full Transcript)

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: World's largest social media companies have been accused of creating addiction machines as a landmark trial began in California examining the mental health effects of Instagram and YouTube. In his opening argument before the Los Angeles Superior Court judge and a jury, Mark Lanier argued that his client plaintiff known as KGM suffered from mental health issues as a result of her social media addiction. This afternoon, the lawyers for Meta and YouTube are expected to argue that KGM's addiction has stemmed from other issues in her life and not their negligence. Well, Mary Graw Leary is law professor at the Catholic University of America and she talked me through the opening statements.

[00:00:49] Speaker 2: Sure. The thrust of this trial is it is the first time that before a jury, these big tech companies are going to be held responsible or at least have to respond to in a public forum, the accusations that you laid out from the plaintiffs. So this opening statement was pretty much what we expected based on the publicly available pieces of evidence and the previously filed documents on both parties. The crux of the plaintiff's allegations are that big tech was aware of the harm of their products, but they continue to pursue profit over children and they understood it as a cost of doing business that some children would be harmed by their products.

[00:01:34] Speaker 1: We will see Mark Zuckerberg and other top bosses grilled as a part of this trial. Why do you think Meta and YouTube have not settled?

[00:01:46] Speaker 2: It's a great question. Of course the other two potential defendants in this Bellwether trial did settle, but these defendants have chosen not to. The decision to settle is really a fact-specific one and in some ways it's the importance and the value of settling is really only known by the parties because they know and they have more information than the public does about exactly what evidence that they expect and they also have information that is somewhat intangible. Is this witness going to be a good witness? Is the opposing witness not going to be a good witness? So for all of those reasons defendants will come out differently on whether or not they should settle, but there is a business aspect to this as well and the choice to settle a case is often a financial one, that it is more cost effective to settle the case than to go to trial either because of the cost of litigation or the risk that you are exposed to in terms of a final verdict. So these parties have made that decision and it would seem at this point with opening statements having already begun that at this point they don't anticipate wanting to settle.

[00:02:59] Speaker 1: From your perspective is this case the beginning of a process a bit like we saw years ago with the tobacco companies when they were finally put to task and it was proven that tobacco was harmful for health. Is this a similar scenario we're seeing here with these tech companies?

[00:03:20] Speaker 2: I think it is a very similar scenario. For over two decades here in the United States the tech companies have attempted to create an atmosphere in which they are free from being held accountable for their decisions. They've done it similar to the tobacco companies it would seem. They've done it in courtrooms by manipulating the law and making certain allegations and they've done it outside the courtrooms making certain claims that perhaps are misleading the public. By being able to get to the point where they are now in front of a jury the public for the first time will be able to see what are the decisions that these companies have been making, what was the information that they knew, when did they know it, and this might change very much the perception that these tech companies have been trying to publicly put forward if the evidence is in opposed to what they are claiming was really happening in those decisional meetings.