{"id":23510,"date":"2026-02-09T11:57:11","date_gmt":"2026-02-09T09:57:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jhb-webdevelopers\/channelafrica\/news\/instagram-youtube-addiction-trial-kicks-off-in-los-angeles\/"},"modified":"2026-02-27T16:34:17","modified_gmt":"2026-02-27T14:34:17","slug":"instagram-youtube-addiction-trial-kicks-off-in-los-angeles","status":"publish","type":"news","link":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/news\/instagram-youtube-addiction-trial-kicks-off-in-los-angeles\/","title":{"rendered":"Instagram, YouTube addiction trial kicks off in Los Angeles"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p class=\"x_MsoNormal\">The 20-year-old woman identified as K.G.M. filed the lawsuit against Facebook and Instagram parent company, Meta Platforms, and Alphabet&#8217;s Google, which owns YouTube. She says the attention-grabbing design of the platforms got her addicted to them at a young age, according to court filings. She alleges the apps fueled her depression and suicidal thoughts and she is seeking to hold the companies liable.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p class=\"x_MsoNormal\">A verdict against the tech companies could smooth the way for similar cases in state court and shake the industry&#8217;s longstanding United States legal defense against claims of user harm. Google, Meta, TikTok and Snap face thousands of lawsuits in California.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p class=\"x_MsoNormal\">Meta Platforms Chief Executive Officer,\u00a0 Mark Zuckerberg is expected to be called as a witness at the trial, which is likely to stretch into March. TikTok and Snap settled with K.G.M. before the trial.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p class=\"x_MsoNormal\">&#8211;Reuters&#8211;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":21042,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"news-type":[26],"class_list":["post-23510","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-general_news","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"A California state court case over whether Instagram and YouTube harmed a woman's mental health through addictive app design kicks off on Monday with opening statements, in a test of whether Big Tech platforms can be held liable for harming kids","published_date":"2026-02-09 00:00:00","news_description":"A California state court case over whether Instagram and YouTube harmed a woman's mental health through addictive app design kicks off on Monday with opening statements, in a test of whether Big Tech platforms can be held liable for harming kids","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/23510","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/23510\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26453,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/23510\/revisions\/26453"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21042"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23510"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=23510"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}