Many parents know the struggle of prying a tablet away from a toddler. A recent California court case suggests that struggle may well be intentional. A jury found Meta and YouTube liable for deliberately designing addictive products that harmed a young user, in a ruling that many see as a watershed moment in the legal fight over children and social media. What does that mean for parents of preschoolers?
Most of the media attention around this case has focused on teenagers. But the evidence presented in court points to something broader: a business model built around capturing young users early and keeping them engaged for as long as possible. According to reporting by The Guardian, internal Meta documents included the line that “the young ones are the best ones” for long-term retention. Another document said that targeting teens could serve as a “gateway” to bring in other family members. One employee even compared targeting 11-year-olds to tobacco companies a few decades ago.
That comparison is telling. In the 1990s, lawsuits against tobacco companies showed that firms had long understood the addictive nature of their products, and the value of reaching users early in life, while publicly downplaying the risks. The current cases against social media platforms follow a similar logic: they focus not just on harm, but on design choices and what companies knew when they made them.
A jury found that YouTube and Meta deliberately designed addictive products.
The California case was one of the first to go to trial, and part of a much larger wave of lawsuits. It centred on a young woman who said she became addicted to YouTube at six and Instagram at nine. Lawyers argued that features such as autoplay and infinite scroll were part of the “engineering of addiction”, designed to keep users on the platform for longer. The Guardian notes that these features were central to the case, and that jurors concluded the platforms were defectively designed.
Platforms like YouTube and Meta are built to maximise time spent, because attention drives revenue. The California verdict is striking not only because one young woman won, but also because it exposed how those design choices are made, and what they prioritise. It is a warning worth taking seriously.
This should also ring alarm bells for parents of young children who are already using platforms like YouTube. They are exposed to the same features designed to keep users engaged. The case underlines that some of the hardest moments around screens are shaped by design. But we are not at the mercy of Big Tech. Alternatives are emerging, and it is worth choosing carefully from the start what platforms to use, to help children build healthier screen habits.