Judge denies Google, Meta bid for new trial in youth addiction case

A Los Angeles judge refused to give Google and Meta a new trial in a youth social media addiction case, preserving a jury verdict that found the companies liable for designing platforms harmful to young people. The ruling keeps in place one of the clearest tests yet of whether social media firms can be held responsible not just for user posts, but for the addictive structure of their products.

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Carolyn Kuhl denied the companies’ motions on Tuesday, June 9, according to court documents cited by Reuters. The written order explaining her reasoning was not immediately available, but the result leaves standing the March 25 verdict that awarded $6 million in damages, including $4.2 million against Meta and $1.8 million against Google.

The plaintiff was a 20-year-old woman identified in court as Kaley, who said she became addicted to YouTube and Instagram at a young age. Jurors heard evidence focused on design features such as infinite scroll, which lawyers for the plaintiff argued were built to keep young users engaged for as long as possible. Snap and TikTok were also defendants in the case, but they settled before trial and the terms were not disclosed.

The legal significance of Kuhl’s refusal to order a retrial reaches far beyond the size of the award. The Los Angeles case was intended as a bellwether for thousands of similar lawsuits consolidated in California state courts, and the surviving theory centers on product design rather than content moderation. That distinction matters because social media companies generally rely on strong protections under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act and the First Amendment for user-generated content.

In post-trial arguments on June 4, Meta and YouTube lawyers said the jury had been exposed to evidence about content they believed was shielded by those protections. Kuhl had already cleared the case to go to trial in November 2025, when she denied summary judgment motions in the coordinated California youth-harms litigation.

The ruling lands amid a broader policy backlash over teen online safety and platform accountability. Just one day before the Los Angeles verdict, a New Mexico jury found Meta liable in a separate child-safety case, and the New Mexico Department of Justice said the company was ordered to pay $375 million in civil penalties. Advocates including Amnesty International have argued that cases like these show why lawmakers and regulators are increasingly looking at addictive design features, not just parental controls, as a public policy problem.