Kaley was six years old when she started using YouTube and nine when she started using Instagram. It was the start of an addiction that would ruin her childhood. Instagram was the first thing she opened in the morning and the scrolling continued until she went to bed.
"I stopped spending time with my family because I spent all my time on social media," she told the jury in a Los Angeles court, according to the BBC.
More cases are pending
The case of the now 20-year-old woman is groundbreaking. For the first time, an American jury has ruled that tech giants have deliberately made their products addictive, and that this has in turn caused mental illness.
What stands out is that in this case they looked at the product itself, not the content, said Rob Nicholls, a researcher at the University of Sydney specializing in technology and legislation. He believes that this also has implications abroad.
If there are others who have suffered from mental illness as a result of their social media addiction, it is likely that they will want to take action when they see the case in California.
Also in the US, 20 other so-called landmark cases are pending in various states, all of which will take a look at the Kaley ruling.
Nicholls and others draw parallels to the many legal cases against tobacco companies in the United States in the 1990s.
The big tobacco companies were effectively admitting that they had a product that caused harm.
The large and costly tobacco settlement in 1998 led to warning labels and advertising restrictions.
The world changed its view of smoking; it went from seeing the Marlboro Man as a cool symbol of American cigarettes to viewing smoking as unusual.
“Shift over time”
This ruling and potentially other court cases could similarly change people's views on social media.
I also think it will lead to social media changing their products in a similar way to the tobacco companies, with products with lower nicotine and so on, said Rob Nicholls.
Google and Meta have started offering other products for underage users that help parents manage their children's screen time. This affects the way children use social media, so that when they become adults, their usage doesn't suddenly increase. It will be a shift over time.
The case is the first in the United States where a jury has found that Google and Meta's platforms are addictive. The court ordered the companies to pay a total of $6 million in two separate damage awards.
Both Google and Meta say the ruling will be appealed.
TikTok and Snapchat reached a settlement with the woman and thus avoided the lawsuit.
Meta also recently lost a case in New Mexico in which it was deemed to have violated state regulations by failing to adequately protect children from the risk of sexual abuse, among other issues, and was ordered to pay $375 million. Meta has said it will appeal the ruling.
