LOS ANGELES, Feb 25 (Reuters) - A young California woman was due to testify in court on Wednesday about how she believes her childhood use of Meta Platforms' Instagram and Google's YouTube impaired her mental health, as the landmark trial of her social media addiction case took a new turn.
She was expected to take the witness stand following completion of testimony from a licensed psychotherapist who diagnosed and treated the plaintiff, known in court as Kaley G.M., for several months in 2019, beginning when she was 13 years old.
The therapist, Victoria Burke, testified that she initially diagnosed Kaley as suffering from generalized anxiety disorder, but later revised her findings to a diagnosis of both social phobia and body dysmorphic disorder.
Burke drew no conclusions as to whether social media was a contributing factor in Kaley's adolescent struggles with fear of social rejection and peer judgment, or her excessive rumination over perceived flaws in her physical appearance.
But the therapist said Kaley often complained about online "bullying" by peers, and she recalled at least one instance in which the girl told her she had "deleted" herself from social media, only to return later.
According to her lawsuit, the plaintiff began using YouTube at age 6 and Instagram at age 9, and says the platforms contributed to psychiatric disorders, including depression and body dysmorphia.
Her lawyers have cast their client as a victim of deliberate designs and business models that have sought to profit by hooking young children on advertising-supported online services despite knowing social media could undermine their mental health.
The case is part of a broader global backlash against social media companies over alleged harms to children and teens. Australia has banned young users from such platforms, and other countries are considering similar restrictions.
The beginning of the trial focused on what the companies knew about how social media affects children, and their business strategies related to younger users. On Wednesday, the direction of the trial shifted to the woman's claims of how the online services affected her. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified that the company discussed but never launched products for children.
To win the case, Kaley's lawyers will have to show that the way the companies designed or operated the platforms was a substantial factor in causing or worsening her mental health issues.
Her health records show a history of verbal and physical abuse and a fraught relationship with her parents, who divorced when she was 3 years old, Meta's lawyer said in opening statements.
Her own lawyer has pointed to a recent internal study by Meta where teens with difficult life circumstances more often said they used Instagram habitually or unintentionally.
Features such as videos that autoplay and a feed that allows for endless scrolling were designed to keep users on the platforms longer, despite evidence of harms to younger users' mental health, her lawyers allege. Meanwhile, "like" buttons catered to teenagers' need for validation while beauty filters warped their self-image, the lawyer said.
YouTube's lawyer said Kaley failed to use platform features designed to protect users from bullying, including tools to delete comments and limit time spent watching videos, according to a court filing.
The attorney in court cited records that show her average time viewing YouTube Shorts was around 1 minute 14 seconds a day and her average time spent streaming YouTube videos in the past five years was around 29 minutes.
In testimony on Wednesday, Burke testified that the notion of social media addiction had yet to emerge as a widely recognized phenomenon in her field, and was still not listed as a diagnosis in the latest edition of the Diagnostic Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the authoritative guide used by mental health professionals.
(Reporting by Jody Godoy in New York and Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; Additional reporting by Courtney Rozen in Washington; Editing by Aurora Ellis)
