Yes, this week YouTube and Meta [1]were found negligent in a landmark case about social media addiction.

But "it's [2]still far from certain what this defeat will change ," argues The Verge 's senior tech and policy editor, "and what the collateral damage could be."

> If these decisions survive appeal — which isn't certain — the direct outcome would be multimillion-dollar penalties. Depending on the outcome of [3]several more "bellwether" cases in Los Angeles, a much larger group settlement could be reached down the road... For many activists, the overall goal is to make clear that lawsuits will keep piling up if companies don't change their business practices...

>

> The best-case outcome of all this has been laid out by people like Julie Angwin, [4]who wrote in The New York Times that companies should be pushed to change "toxic" features like infinite scrolling, beauty filters that encourage body dysmorphia, and algorithms that prioritize "shocking and crude" content. The worst-case scenario falls along the lines of a piece from [5]Mike Masnick at Techdirt , who argued the rulings spell disaster for smaller social networks that could be sued for letting users post and see First Amendment-protected speech under a vague standard of harm. He noted that the New Mexico case hinged partly on arguing that Meta had harmed kids by providing end-to-end encryption in private messaging, creating an incentive to discontinue a feature that protects users' privacy — and indeed, [6]Meta discontinued end-to-end encryption on Instagram earlier this month.

>

> Blake Reid, a professor at Colorado Law, is more circumspect. "It's hard right now to forecast what's going to happen," Reid told The Verge in an interview. [7]On Bluesky , he noted that companies will likely look for "cold, calculated" ways to avoid legal liability with the minimum possible disruption, not fundamentally rethink their business models. "There are obviously harms here and it's pretty important that the tort system clocked those harms" in the recent cases, he told The Verge . "It's just that what comes in the wake of them is less clear to me".

The article also includes this prediction from legal blogger/Section 230 export Eric Goldman. "There will be even stronger pushes to restrict or ban children from social media." Goldman argues "This hurts many subpopulations of minors, ranging from LGBTQ teens who will be isolated from communities that can help them navigate their identities to minors on the autism spectrum who can express themselves better online than they can in face-to-face conversations."



[1] https://meta.slashdot.org/story/26/03/25/1745232/meta-and-youtube-found-negligent-in-landmark-social-media-addiction-case

[2] https://www.theverge.com/policy/903006/meta-new-mexico-los-angeles-child-safety-trial-impact

[3] https://www.theverge.com/policy/867830/social-media-trials-product-liability-school-districts

[4] https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/26/opinion/big-tech-meta-youtube-lawsuit.html?unlocked_article_code=1.WFA.4xNQ.rhJN6Un_4_tJ&smid=nytcore-ios-share

[5] https://www.techdirt.com/2026/03/26/everyone-cheering-the-social-media-addiction-verdicts-against-meta-should-understand-what-theyre-actually-cheering-for/

[6] https://www.theverge.com/tech/894752/instagram-end-to-end-encryption

[7] https://bsky.app/profile/chup.blakereid.org/post/3mhvpcqtdkk2o