At the center of the case is a 19-year-old California woman identified in court documents by the initials “K.G.M.” or “Kelsey G.M,” who is accusing the tech giants of engineering products that rewire young people’s brains and trap them in a cycle of addiction and mental illness.
In arguments on Feb. 10, Luis Li, an attorney for YouTube and its parent company, Google, said, “It’s not social media addiction when it’s not social media and it’s not an addiction. ... ‘Miss G.M.’ is not addicted.”
The plaintiff’s attorneys assert that K.G.M. was a minor when she allegedly became addicted to social media platforms, which she claims led to damaging mental health impacts, including depression, body dysmorphia, and suicidal ideation.
The case is one of three bellwether trials that will presage how thousands of related cases brought by children, parents, school districts and state attorneys general are argued and tried—and what kind of damages might be expected.
Like Big Tobacco and National Opioid settlements before them, the cases mark a generational turning point and could have profound, long-term impacts on how the industry operates.
‘You Can Stop That Anytime You Want’
Looking to redirect the narrative after plaintiff’s attorneys on Monday used baby alphabet blocks to argue that the case was “as easy as ABC”—or, “Addicting Children’s Brains,”—Li argued that YouTube was “not trying to deviously get into your brain” but rather asking what you want to watch and giving it to you for free.He suggested the video app is something more akin to Netflix or the Disney channel, offering unparalleled empowerment for content creators and an indispensable tool for America’s teachers.
But attorneys for the plaintiff contend that YouTube and Instagram are designed with features—including “endless scroll” features like YouTube’s “Shorts” and ephemeral ones like Instagram’s “stories”—that keep kids plugged into a “frictionless” supply of a drug they can’t turn away from, even when they want to.
Li countered that the “endless scroll” is in fact not endless.
“You can stop that anytime you want,” he said, adding that it was “not that different” from Netflix loading the next episode of a series. “Likes,” he said, are akin to Amazon Prime reviews, helping users figure out what they want.
“The internet works this way,” Li said. “If you don’t like it, don’t click it. Just turn it off.” He noted users can control their experience by disabling likes, changing notifications, or opting for fewer Shorts.
In arguing that K.G.M. was not addicted to YouTube, Li said her user history on the platform proved as much.
Over the five-year period from 2020 to 2025, she averaged a daily overall use of 29 minutes, with around four minutes per day from AutoPlay, and one minute, 14 seconds on Shorts, Li said.
‘Social Media Addiction Is Real’
The ABC blocks remained on attorney Mark Lanier’s desk Tuesday as he dug into a granular view of the science behind social media addiction with expert witness Dr. Anna Lembke, medical director of addiction medicine at Stanford University’s School of Medicine.Social media apps, Lembke said, “drugify the human connection,” distilling the most “reinforcing elements” of social interaction and targeting primal neurological functions and vulnerabilities particular to developing brains.
Lembke said her review of hundreds of the companies’ internal documents, of the medical literature and her own clinical experience all point to an undeniable reality: “Social media addiction is real and can lead to many physical and mental health harms.”
Like substance addiction, social media addiction shares similar, universal withdrawal symptoms, but is revealing novel ones, too, Lembke said. “Sadly, we’re seeing more and more young people who experience not just psychological distress but physical distress when their devices are taken away,” she said, pointing to increasing cases of suicidal ideation, “rage attacks,” and hospitalizations.
“There is a wealth of evidence showing the earlier the exposure to the substance or behavior, the more likely they are to become addicted,” Lembke said.
By targeting the brain’s “reward pathway” and disrupting how it self-regulates, Lembke explained, social media platforms are pushing young people into addiction.
Where many patients may use social media to self-soothe—to tackle anxiety or insomnia, for example, by scrolling at night—after time, she said, “the addiction itself can become the source of the trauma.”
Attorneys for the defendants argue there is no evidence to support social media addiction at the population level.
While YouTube attorneys claimed they are providing their products for free, Lembke disagreed.
“We’re paying for them with our lived time. There really is no more precious commodity.”
Li suggested YouTube has a net positive effect, including on the plaintiff.
“Miss GM has a passion for video editing,” said Li. “Where do you think she learned how to do video editing? From YouTube.”
