Yesterday, Monday, the opening hearings began before the Los Angeles County Superior Court in a case related to the harm caused to children as a result of their use of platforms belonging to the largest social media companies in the world.
Meta, the company that owns Facebook and Instagram, as well as YouTube, a subsidiary of Google, is facing charges in lawsuits alleging that their platforms deliberately caused children to become addicted and harm them.
It is noteworthy that the companies “Tik Tok” and “Snap” were originally part of the lawsuit, before they both reached a financial settlement, the value of which was not announced.
Jurors were treated to the first start of a trial expected to be long, marked by conflicting views between plaintiffs and the two social media companies remaining as defendants.
Paul Schmidt, Meta’s lawyer, explained that there is an existing disagreement in scientific circles about the idea of addiction to social media platforms, as some researchers believe that this phenomenon does not exist, or they believe that the term “addiction” is not the best description for the excessive use of these platforms.
