Meta and YouTube must pay millions in damages to a 20-year-old woman after a jury decided they designed their platforms to hook young users without concern for their wellbeing.
A landmark ruling which found Meta and Google liable for social media addiction could cost the companies up to a trillion dollars, a former Facebook employee has told LBC.
The tech giants were proved to have acted negligently after a 20-year-old woman in the US said her early use of social media made her addicted and her depression worse.
A jury sitting on the case at Los Angeles County Superior Court ordered the companies to pay $6 million in damages after she claimed that the technology exacerbated her mental health struggles.
Speaking to LBC, former Facebook employee-turned whistleblower, Frances Haugen, said the ruling could lead to "astronomical" figures being paid out by the companies.
Read more: Explained: The 'historic' social media ruling that could change the face of online safety forever
She told Tonight with Andrew Marr: "The numbers we're talking about here are astronomical. You know, you can look at a single case and say, oh, it's only $6 million in damages.
"But when applied across the number of children that have been harmed in the United States, we need a fraction of one per cent of children of teenagers in the US to be harmed, as this woman was, for it to equal a trillion dollars in damages.
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