The Brief

A California jury on Wednesday found that Meta and Google's YouTube were to blame for the depression and anxiety of a woman who compulsively used social media as a small child, awarding her $6 million in a rare verdict holding Silicon Valley accountable for its role in fueling a youth mental health crisis.

The jurors concluded that Meta and Google should pay the woman $3 million in compensatory damages and an additional $3 million in punitive damages, with Meta on the hook for 70% of that amount.

As the verdict was read, the plaintiff, known only as Kaley, looked straight ahead stony-faced, while her lawyers shook their heads in approval. The lawyers for Meta and Google did not react to the jury's decision.

The outcome of this case could influence thousands of other consolidated cases against the social media companies. The litigation has drawn comparisons to the legal crusade that led to industry changes against Big Tobacco in the 1990s.

Joseph VanZandt, the co-lead lawyer for families and others suing social media companies, said Wednesday's judgement is a step toward holding Silicon Valley giants accountable.

"But this verdict is bigger than one case. For years, social media companies have profited from targeting children while concealing their addictive and dangerous design features. Today's verdict is a referendum — from a jury, to an entire industry — that accountability has arrived," he said in a joint statement with the plaintiff's legal team.

Meta and Google said they disagree with the verdict. Meta said it is weighing its legal options and Google plans to appeal.

"This case misunderstands YouTube, which is a responsibly built streaming platform, not a social media site," said Google spokesman José Castañeda.

Meta hit with $375 million in damages in separate New Mexico trial

The verdict from a Los Angeles jury over the harms of social media comes a day after a separate jury in New Mexico ordered Meta to pay $375 million in damages for failing to protect young users from child predators on Instagram and Facebook. The New Mexico jury found Meta responsible for misleading consumers about the safety of its platforms, declaring that the tech company had flouted state consumer protection laws.

That trial will enter a second phase, in May, in which a judge will decide whether Meta created a public nuisance and if the company must pay additional penalties to address harms. New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez said he will also ask the court to force changes to make Meta's apps safer.

"Juries in New Mexico and California have recognized that Meta's public deception and design features are putting children in harm's way," Torrez said in a statement on Wednesday.

The blockbuster verdicts land against the backdrop of school districts and state lawmakers around the country limiting or banning phone use in schools. This week's verdicts mark the first time juries have decided that tech companies are at least partially liable for online and off-line dangers kids and teenagers encounter after incessantly using social media.

Over a more than month-long trial in Los Angeles, the jury of five men and seven women heard competing narratives about what role social media platforms played in the mental health struggles of a woman identified as KGM, or Kaley, a now-20-year-old from Chico, Calif., who said she first started using YouTube at 6 years old and Instagram when she was 11.

Lawyers for KGM argued that Instagram and YouTube were deliberately designed to be addictive and the companies knew the platforms were harming young people, while the tech companies countered that their services cannot be blamed for complex mental health issues.

KGM's legal team showed the jury internal documents from Meta in which CEO Mark Zuckerberg and other executives described the company's efforts to attract and keep kids and teens on its platforms. One document said: "If we wanna win big with teens, we must bring them in as tweens," and another internal memo showed that 11-year-olds were four times as likely to keep coming back to Instagram, compared with competing apps, despite the platform requiring users to be at least 13 years old.

Under questioning about these documents, Zuckerberg told the jury that keeping young users safe has always been a company priority. "If people feel like they're not having a good experience, why would they keep using the product?" Zuckerberg said.

The trial is a test case, known as a bellwether, tied to about 2,000 other pending lawsuits brought by parents and school districts arguing that social media giants should be considered manufacturers of defective products for hooking a generation of young people to social media feeds.

Throughout the case, the companies insisted that there is no scientific proof that social media causes mental health issues, suggesting that they are being used as a scapegoat for the multi-faceted emotional issues children face that can have many root causes.

Snapchat and TikTok were also defendants in the case, but both companies settled before the trial began.

LA case focused on design of social media platforms to overcome liability shield

For decades, tech companies have avoided legal liability over the content that appears on their sites because of a federal law known as Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act, which says that tech companies are not legally responsible for what their users post. This has made it difficult to bring cases over social media harms to trial.

In the Los Angeles case, lawyers took a different approach by focusing on how tech companies built their platforms. They argued that features like infinite scroll, constant notifications, autoplay and beauty filters made apps like Instagram and YouTube equivalent to a "digital casino," which young people found too irresistible to put down.

By taking this tack, the lawyers pursued a case alleging defective design that was able to get around the high bar set by Section 230. It's not what users post, the lawyers argued, but the very architecture of social media platforms.

"How do you make a child never put down the phone? That's called the engineering of addiction," said KGM's lawyer Mark Lanier, a Texas trial attorney and part-time pastor who had a penchant for drawing on documents with markers on overhead project slides to keep the jury engaged.

Over the course of five weeks, jurors heard from therapists, engineers, tech executives including Zuckerberg, and the plaintiff herself about just how culpable big tech companies should be for contributing to KGM's mental health struggles.

Were her issues pre-existing, or exacerbated by her home life, or deepened by social media?

Meta and Google fought back by underscoring the emotional and physical abuse her medical records indicated she experienced at home. Lawyers for the tech companies also hammered the point that Kaley's own therapist never documented that social media use was a factor in her mental health problems.

From the witness stand, KGM testified that using social media affected her self-worth, as she got further drawn into the apps and withdrew from friends and family.

She developed depression and body dysmorphia, she said, as she continuously compared herself to others and used beauty filters to enhance her appearance.

She so craved the validation of social media, she said, that she would run off to the bathroom at school to check the number of "likes" her posts had received. She testified that it was hard to concentrate on school because all she wanted to do was stay glued to her social media feeds.

The jury was not tasked with deciding whether Meta and Google had created Kaley's mental health woes, but rather if her compulsive social media use was a "substantial factor" in her struggles and if the defective design of the platforms was the direct cause of the distress.

Lanier, who is known for trotting out large exhibits for trial spectacle, closed his questioning of Zuckerberg with one such display.

Lanier and several of his associates held up a 35-foot collage featuring hundreds of selfies Kaley had posted to Instagram, many of which used beauty filters, just as she was struggling with body-image issues. Zuckerberg looked on, as Lanier peppered him with questions about how and why a girl under the age of 13, Meta's minimum age to create an account, was able to post to the app so obsessively.

In his closing argument, Lanier drew the jury's attention to internal documents showing how top officials at Meta and Google were aware of how its products were causing harm to young people.

"I don't naysay the opportunity to make money," Lanier said. "But when you're making money off of kids, you have to do it responsibly.

NPR's Shannon Bond contributed to this report.

Dan Shimell, an attorney and a new face in local politics, is Santa Ana’s next mayor after a shocking win against incumbent Valerie Amezcua. His win has become one of the most surprising upsets in Orange County’s general election and marks a shift for a city that previously elected its first Latina mayor.

Amezcua congratulated Shimell on social media late Monday night after the last round of election results nearly doubled Shimell’s lead. As of Tuesday night, Shimell held a 5-point lead over Amezcua. Amezcua did not respond to LAist’s requests for comment.

“It has been the honor of my life to serve the people of Santa Ana,” Amezcua said in a post. “Together, we have accomplished great things. We invested in our neighborhoods, expanded opportunity for families, and strengthened the services that make Santa Ana home. Our work was never about one person. It was about all of us moving this community forward.”

Aside from Shimell, progressives Sandra de Anda and Isuri S. Ramos are also projected to win City Council seats, deepening the Santa Ana City Council’s progressive bench.

A flashpoint in Amezcua’s re-election campaign was during the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids that rattled much of Southern California, including Santa Ana, Orange County’s only sanctuary city. The raids sparked protests that drew a heavy law enforcement response from Santa Ana police, including rubber bullets and tear gas.

In Amezcua’s first public response, she accused protesters of inciting chaos and violence. She later walked back her comments in a city statement, saying most protesters were demonstrating peacefully and that she did not support the raids.

Shimell told LAist he thinks Santa Ana voters, especially young and first-time voters, went to the polls to vote for those who can't.

“Those who have been or might in the future be impacted by immigration policy and enforcement,” Shimell added. “Taking a bold stance on immigration and police accountability seemed to resonate with voters I spoke with, and stood in stark contrast to the [police]-backed candidates who remained largely silent on those issues.”

What does this say about Santa Ana politics? 

Orange County Supervisor Vicente Sarmiento served as mayor of the city from 2020 to 2022, and his current district includes Santa Ana. Sarmiento told LAist that the results were surprising but reflected the change voters want to see in their elected officials.

“I think the underlying message is that money and establishment conventional politics no longer is the formula to success in a campaign in the city,” Sarmiento said. “It's really the influence of people and voters over money. That's really the theme here.”

Santa Ana City Councilmember Thai Viet Phan told LAist that the race results were somewhat surprising — but spoke to a larger trend.

“[In] the election results throughout the country … you saw a very leftward shift, with not just candidates but also just how voters voted,” Phan said. “I think that was reflected here in Santa Ana on the council.”

Amezcua outspent Shimell — by a lot

Shimell raised about $28,500 in his campaign for mayor. Amezcua raised more than $75,000 and received more than $200,000 in outside support — more than half of that came from the Santa Ana Police Officers Association.

Mike Moodian, a public policy professor at Chapman University, told LAist that in many ways, the races capture the zeitgeist of Santa Ana.

“Here we saw that there was a police union-backed group, and there was a resistance to that,” Moodian said. “People might have seen the incumbent mayor as part of a police union-backed establishment."

He explained that voters may have looked at Shimell as a fresh face who can represent more people and that the city is experiencing a deeper progressive shift.

“I find the residents of Santa Ana tend to be much more involved and engaged in local politics than most other cities in Orange County. So you also have a well-informed, engaged citizenry that showed up, and the voices were heard in Santa Ana,” Moodian said.

Moodian said Amezcua may have lost support from some voters because they were unsatisfied with her response to immigration enforcement.

What’s next?

Ballots are still being counted. The OC Registrar of Voters posts updates every day, except Sundays, at 5 p.m. Election results will be certified by Dec. 3. You can find updates on key measures and other races here.

For seven years, Nazmul Chaudhry has been trying to get the city of Los Angeles to fix a broken sidewalk in front of his store.

Chaudhry owns Deshi Food, a restaurant and grocery store in Little Bangladesh. Before I could even begin our interview, he led me to the front of his store to show me the sidewalk that pedestrians sidestep and electric scooter riders slow down around.

He said he’s tried to get the attention of city officials, but nothing has been done.

The broken sidewalk in front of Nazmul Chaudhry's shop in Little Bangladesh.

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He’s hoping that will soon change. He said then-candidate Nithya Raman spent time in the historic enclave just north of Koreatown this fall, talking with community members about their problems. For the first time since he moved to the United States in 1989, Chaudhry is excited about a mayoral election.

“Everybody's happy because we've never seen anyone [come] like that directly to us,” Chaudhry said.

Mayor-elect Raman is of Indian descent and an immigrant. When she takes office, she will be the first South Asian mayor of Los Angeles. Chaudhry is proud of that distinction. But what means more to him is that Raman spent time walking the streets of Little Bangladesh, visiting businesses and speaking to community members about their concerns. Chaudhry said that, because of that, he asked all his customers and family members to vote for Raman. At dinner parties, Chaudhry said, Bengalis would share how they were excited to vote for Raman in this election.

Nazmul Chaudhry and one of his customers, Mohamed Hassen. They both voted for Nithya Raman for mayor.

In the Little Bangladesh area, vote returns to date show Raman with a 2-to-1 margin over Mayor Karen Bass.

 "Hopefully she's gonna take care of the city," Chaudhry said.

His business has been hit hard after federal immigration raids ramped up in Southern California. People are afraid to leave their homes for fear of being taken by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. And for those who do come to his store, he said, they are met with increased prices because of tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump's administration on imported goods.

Nazmul Chaudry offers a lunch buffet at his restaurant but he has seen a drop in foot traffic after ICE raids ramped up.

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"Everybody's suffering actually these days," Chaudhry said. “If you see, Nov. 3 is a huge change because people [are] fed up."

Chaudhry also said city services don’t do a good job keeping the streets clean. So he takes it upon himself to pick up trash in front of his shop.

A few weeks before Election Day, Raman posted a social media video from Little Bangladesh addressing the trash along the street.

His relatives in New York told Chaudhry that New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, also of Indian descent, has “changed the whole city.” He’s hoping for some of that change in Los Angeles when Raman takes office in December.

Shift away from identity politics

While Raman’s Indian background was a feature of her campaign, it was “not the central thesis,” said Sara Sadhwani,  an associate professor of politics at Pomona College and a senior researcher with AAPI Data.

In 2020, when Kamala Harris, also of Indian descent, was running for vice president, Sadhwani said, she conducted research on Indian Americans who wanted to see more representation in politics. In 2024, some of them turned away from Harris.

“When the economy is bad, identity slips away as the top issue on someone's mind,” she said.

Identity politics, Sadhwani said, was important in 2008 when the nation elected the first Black president, Barack Obama.

Los Angeles mayor-elect Nithya Raman poses for a photograph with family members after casting her vote on Election Day during the midterm elections at the Silverlake Community Church.

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Frederic J. Brown

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“ We're ushering in a new political generation of millennials and Gen Z; diversity is just expected at this point amongst a vast majority of Americans,” she said, highlighting how at the last census more people identified as multiracial.

Nationally too, Sadhwani said, thec ountry is seeing a shift. South Asians have gone from “model minority” to “governing minority.”

”The old script was that for Indian Americans, for South Asians, that being that quiet professional is what success meant,” she said. “When we look at Raman and also Mamdani, they're fighting for executive power in very visible, very messy city politics, and they won not by following the rules, but they won by challenging the status quo.”

South Asians as a political force

That idea resonates with Faizah Malik, managing attorney for housing justice at Public Counsel and a former L.A. City Council candidate.

“When we were growing up, our parents said, ‘Just keep your head down, go to school, get educated, make a nice life for your family, and that's it,’” she said. “Politics was not really part of the conversation, but I think what we're seeing is that we can run for office, we can win by being our full selves.”

This is an exciting time, she said, for “South Asian political empowerment,” with Raman set to join Mamdani in leading the country’s two largest cities.

Malik said that, as a housing advocate, she cares about Raman’s fight “to build more housing around the city that people can afford, her fight to keep renters in their homes, to prevent homelessness, her fight to try and really solve our homelessness crisis but also be efficient with our public dollars.”

Nikita Chaudhry, an actor and political organizer, wants to see Raman revitalize L.A.’s film industry, “to call the city the home of Hollywood again.”

“Having that kind of representation and knowing that it exists is really exciting because I think and hope it will activate South Asian Americans of all ages to get more involved in their communities,” Chaudhry said.

Raman's and Mamdani’s victories were years in the making, Chaudhry said: from organizing in their communities to holding other elected positions to engaging voters who are otherwise ignored by elected officials. And she hopes that it will inspire other South Asians to become more involved in their communities.

“If you're feeling activated, if you're feeling excited, that's great," she said. "Take that energy and the time and the skills and the specificity of what fires you up towards your local organization, towards your neighborhood, towards your community.”

As the race to represent L.A.’s Council District 9 remains too close to call, candidate Estuardo Mazariegos’ campaign has accused the campaign of Jose Ugarte, the front-runner, of potential ballot tampering.

The Mazariegos campaign made the accusations Monday, saying it had filed a complaint with the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk. In a press release, the campaign alleged that representatives for the Ugarte campaign had collected voters’ ballots to drop off without signing the appropriate line identifying the individual who returned the ballot.

In one case, Mazariegos’ team accused Ugarte campaigners of filling out a ballot on a voter’s behalf without her knowledge of who she was voting for.

“Taking people’s ballots, filling them out, and not following legal voter assistance guidelines in a district that has faced so much disenfranchisement is disgusting,” Mazariegos said in a statement.

Mike Sanchez, a spokesperson for the L.A. County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk, said his office had forwarded the news release to the district attorney for review. He also pointed to the California Elections Code, which says that a “ballot shall not be disqualified solely because the person authorized to return it did not provide on the identification envelope their name or signature.”

Under California law, a voter can authorize another person to return their mail-in ballot — an approach also called ballot harvesting.

Justin Levitt, a  professor of constitutional law at Loyola Marymount University, told AirTalk Tuesday that there is no legal limit on the number of ballots an individual can turn in on others’ behalf, so long as they aren’t being compensated per ballot returned.

“Even if there were some sort of administrative wrongdoing, as long as there's no indication of fraud with the ballot itself, those ballots will all be counted,” he said.

Levitt said, however, that signing a ballot and then handing it to someone else to fill out would be illegal.

“ To the extent that there are allegations now that the DA may investigate, I suspect that's what they'll be focusing on,” Levitt continued.

The Mazariegos campaign also sent a collection of photos to the press, including one of a campaigner, USC student Amir King, returning a stack of ballots at a ballot drop box.

The Mazariegos campaign alleged that representatives for the Ugarte campaign had collected voters’ ballots to drop off without signing the appropriate line identifying the individual who returned the ballot.

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Courtesy of Estuardo Mazariegos' Campaign

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Ugarte’s campaign responded to the accusations by pointing to a post by King on Instagram in which he accused the Mazariegos campaign of bullying him and making false claims about him.

“Why is he attacking me? For participating in our democracy, as is my right under California state law and for helping others participate in democracy, as is their right under California state law,” King said in the post.

As of Tuesday morning, just under 300 ballots separate Ugarte and Mazariegos, with 44,000 ballots left to count in L.A. County. It’s not clear how many ballots in Council District 9 are left to count.