During the US addictive design trial against Meta Platforms and Google’s YouTube, grieving parents who lined up as early as midnight outside the Los Angeles courthouse to get one of the precious few seats for the public have been as central a presence in the courtroom as the lawyers for each side and the journalists who fill the back of the room. Sitting just feet away and in full view of the jury, the parents — mostly mothers but with a smattering of fathers — have given the trial a much more emotionally charged dynamic than many US legal disputes involving the tech industry.
When Mark Zuckerberg walks into a Los Angeles courtroom Wednesday and sits down in the witness stand, he is likely to be looking directly at a rank of angry, grieving people who blame him and other tech leaders for the death or harm of their children.During the first two weeks of the trial against Meta Platforms and Google’s YouTube, that group of parents has been as central a presence in the courtroom as Judge Carolyn Kuhl and the courtroom staff, the lawyers and legal support teams for each side, and the journalists who crowd the back of the courtroom.
Queuing outside the downtown LA courthouse as early as midnight to claim the few courtroom seats allocated to the public, the parents have occupied the front row of the gallery each day of the trial, even during jury selection, a tangible reminder that more is at stake in the trial than just money. The presence of the grieving parents in the courtroom, sitting in full view and just feet from the jurors, has given the trial a much more emotionally charged dynamic than in many US legal disputes involving the tech industry.
When Instagram chief Adam Mosseri testified last week (see here) and was questioned at length about Meta executives’ internal debate about whether to allow the use of cosmetic beauty filters that mental health experts warned could trigger body image issues in many young users, it was a painful and emotional experience for many parents in the courtroom.
“To find out that your kid's death may have been preventable, but because of decisions that extremely powerful and wealthy execs made because they didn't want to do anything, because they wanted to make more profit off of your child, to keep them to be a lifelong user, to sell more advertisements and to make themselves richer and their investors richer, that really hurts, because that feels like, where is humanity?” Julianna Arnold, the founding member of a group for parents affected by social media, told MLex in an interview after attending Mosseri’s day-long testimony.
“I mean, that really hits you in the heart — like, that was my kid,” said Arnold, growing emotional as she spoke about her daughter. “You took away the best thing I ever did and ever had with a snap of your finger. And if you had done something, we might still have them in our lives. And now we have to live with that, and yet, we're out here because we don't want it to happen to anyone else.”
Beyond the social media trial that began last week (see here), the parents have become a force advocating for changes in the regulation of social media, including their advocacy for changes in the US law that has provided a legal shield for content posted on social media apps and other interactive online platforms.
Arnold, who said she lost her 17-year-old daughter four years ago to an overdose on drugs her daughter obtained through a seller she met on social media, is also an advocate to overhaul Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, as the founding member of a group called Parents Rise! (see here). Arnold, who is from Los Angeles, also traveled to Washington in December to speak to state attorneys general about her daughter’s death and the impact on other young social media users (see here).
“It's difficult for everyone, but as parent survivors, we really feel that like we have — I mean, not that they should give us special circumstances — but it's important for us to be in there and hear and understand,” Arnold told MLex. She said the parents want the court and the jurors “to know that there are parents who lost their kids in the room, and we're not just statistics.”
During the lunch break in Mosseri’s testimony, another parent who lost her daughter to suicide became so emotional in the hallway outside of the courtroom that she could not return for the afternoon’s testimony. The woman sobbed about her daughter’s use of the cosmetic filters and how she had looked at other young women’s Instagram profiles prior to her suicide. The grieving parents was led away and comforted by Arnold and other parents elsewhere in the courthouse.
Another parent who lost her daughter to suicide watched Mosseri walk out of the courtroom, her lip quivering with emotion, and quietly said to herself, “monster.”
“It's absolutely a Big Tobacco moment for social media, and it's a long time coming,” said Dawn Wible, the founder of a digital wellness and safety organization (see here) who traveled from Waco, Texas, to watch opening statements.
Wible was particularly struck by plaintiff lawyer Mark Lanier’s foreshadowing of evidence he said will show that the companies possessed data showing that parents’ efforts to keep their children off platforms like Instagram was ineffective in the face of the powerful addictive features built into them, such as infinite scrolling of content.
“Parents and child safety advocates are here because it's an important moment to see the burden lie where the burden is supposed to be,” said Wible, whose organization is called “Talk More. Tech Less.” “The industry has gaslit parents and families for a long time and told us that this is on us. This is our fault, and so to get to see the inside, internal documents from the industry saying parents don't have a chance and different things that we saw yesterday [during opening statements] shows the design was to addict minors on the platform, and parents didn't have that information from the industry.”
Meta and YouTube argue that the evidence during the trial will show that many other factors in the life of plaintiff K.G.M., who is also referred to in court by her first name, Kaley, such as drug use, domestic violence and abusive parenting, caused her mental health problems. K.G.M., whose full name is not being used because she was a minor during the period at issue before 2020 in the trial, is expected to testify next week. Meta and YouTube lawyers told the jury during their opening statements that the evidence shows that their platform design was not a substantial factor in those issues.
"The question for the jury in Los Angeles is whether Instagram was a substantial factor in the plaintiff’s mental health struggles. The evidence will show she faced many significant, difficult challenges well before she ever used social media,” said a Meta spokeswoman. A YouTube spokesperson declined to comment.
— Parent movement —
The parents, most of them mothers but with a sprinkling of fathers, have become enough of a presence in the courtroom that Kuhl worried their audible reactions to testimony early in the trial might influence jurors. During a break in Mosseri’s testimony, Kuhl warned parents that they would be told to leave the courtroom if they reacted too much to the testimony.
“The jurors need to hear the evidence as it comes from the witness stand and make a decision based on that, not on someone’s view of that testimony,” Kuhl told the gallery firmly after the jurors had left the courtroom for their lunch break.
There was no repeat of parents making noise or visible reactions after that.
The community of parents concerned about social media harms to young users has even spawned its own media, a podcast called “Scrolling 2 Death” reported and co-hosted by Nicki Petrossi, who has attended the entire trial. Petrossi says her podcast (see here), which launched in 2023 around the time Meta, Snap, TikTok and YouTube began facing litigation over addictive design, is reaching more than 2 million people a week.
Petrossi told MLex she launched the podcast, which frequently features parents who have lost a child following excessive use of social media, because “I thought that we need a space to tell these stories because they were so hard to find. And I wanted to give parents an outlet and a safe space, in a productive way, to educate other parents to tell those stories. And so started interviewing parents who've lost kids to social media harm.”
From that, Scrolling 2 Death expanded to host teachers, pediatricians and writers concerned about social media addiction and harm issues for young users.
Petrossi eschews the term "journalist," saying “I’m just a mom that got mad,” although she has a media pass from the Los Angeles Superior Court to cover the trial alongside Rolling Stone, Bloomberg, CNN, Reuters, Law360, Fox News, MLex and other US and international media.
Beyond covering the trial, Petrossi has also worked with parents seeking federal legislation such as the Kids Online Safety Act (see here).
“We were so excited, and then Big Tech's influence kind of stopped it in its tracks,” Petrossi told MLex. “And I was involved in all of that and came out of that feeling really discouraged about the federal legislation piece and felt like we could make more progress through lawsuits and through direct action as well as corporate pressure.”
Despite the surprise cancellation of the trial Tuesday due to the illness of a juror, Zuckerberg is still expected to be on the witness stand Wednesday (see here). One reason Mosseri’s testimony was so emotional for parents last week, Petrossi said, is the chance to confront the Meta executive face to face. Zuckerberg’s testimony may be even more charged.
“So, these parents see their kids in Kaley, in K.G.M., and they've been fighting for many years for protections,” Petrossi said. “So to hear the head of Instagram talk about lifting bans around certain concerning filters, knowing the risk to young girls especially, and a lot of those moms have — had — young girls, that was really difficult for them to hear, but important for them to be there and let Adam Mosseri see them, and see their emotions.”
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