Q&A: What do landmark ‘addiction’ rulings mean for social media?

March 26, 2026
Illustration of a judges gavel smashing a phone with the Meta and YouTube logos on it

(Illustration by Tobias Wilbur, University Communications)

On Wednesday, a Los Angeles jury found Meta and YouTube liable for claims that their platforms are addictive and harmful to users as young as 6, ordering the companies to pay a combined $6 million in damages.

The decision marks the first in a series of trials expected this year in which plaintiffs’ attorneys will argue that media company Meta and platforms like YouTube, Snapchat and TikTok cause personal injury through defective products.

The ruling came a day after a New Mexico jury ordered Meta to pay $375 million in penalties for putting children at risk.

University of Virginia law professor Andrew Block, an expert in juvenile justice, child advocacy and government policy, spoke with UVA Today about the effects of social media on young people and what the future may hold.

Portrait of Andrew Block

Law professor Andrew Block is an expert in juvenile justice, child advocacy and government policy. (Photo by Julia Davis, UVA School of Law)

Q. Can you explain this week’s decision?

A. In (the Los Angeles) case, the jury found that Meta and YouTube negligently designed their social media platforms in ways they knew were addictive and likely to hurt children, that they failed to inform the public of these dangers, and that these design flaws (or choices) were a substantial factor in the harm suffered by the young woman who was the plaintiff in the case.

Rather than attacking the content on these platforms, the lawyers advanced a theory that social media applications are like other consumer products, and it was the design features of the apps themselves that caused the harm.

Q. What was your immediate response to the ruling?

A. The verdict is obviously important, and some would say long overdue. Legislators and courts have been wrestling for the last few years with ways to mitigate the well-documented harms that social media platforms have caused young people and their communities. However, given the free-speech implications of many of the proposed reforms, courts have frequently thwarted legislative efforts to rein in these platforms.

What was different about this case is that the lawyers argued that it was the design features of the apps themselves that were the source of the addiction and damage. And obviously, the jurors agreed.

Q. What do you think will happen next?

A. Youth and their families, and states, will continue bringing lawsuits, and the defendant companies will continue fighting back.

While this is an important moment, of course, and may signal a decisive shift, this conversation is far from over. For all their detractors, social media companies still have lots of friends, are making money hand over fist, and have billions of users.

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I predict state and federal legislators will look to the legal theories advanced in these court cases as a template for future restrictions and limits on the most addictive features of various social media applications.

Q. What are your observations about the argument and the effects on young people?

A. I come at this through the lens of youth gun violence, and what we have learned from youth, community members and law enforcement across Virginia is that social media plays a toxic role in escalating youth gun violence.

This harm, which disproportionately impacts communities of color, has yet to receive widespread attention – people are mostly focusing on youth mental health – but I suspect in the coming weeks and months it will, and provide yet another reason to bring lawsuits and attempt to enact policy change.

Q. From your perspective, is social media damaging to young people? What are we doing wrong? What should we be doing?

A. Social media is at once incredibly harmful to many young people, but also a social and community lifeline for others. On all levels of society, and as we did with cigarettes, we are now having a moment of reckoning with what we have done, and trying to reorganize – in schools, in our homes and in our own lives – our relationship with social media. We need to continue to learn and recalibrate both the apps themselves and our interactions with them.

We also need to pressure, or force, the companies in every way we can to change the design of their apps and remove some of the most addictive features.

Q. Are different groups of young people affected differently?

A. As we continue to have these conversations and enact reforms, I hope that we all pay attention to the ways that social media is causing different kinds of harm in different communities and with different groups of children.

While there is obviously overlap, the harms that middle-class, suburban, white kids are experiencing are often different than those suffered by children of color in cities across our country, where all too often kids are picking up guns because they’re scared, desensitized and desperate, feelings which social media helps create and exacerbate.

Media Contacts

Jane Kelly

University News Senior Associate Office of University Communications

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