‘Hooked at Six’: Young Woman Testifies YouTube, Instagram Fueled Her Depression in Landmark Trial

A young woman at the centre of a landmark social media addiction lawsuit has described how she became “hooked” on YouTube and Instagram as a childand how the platforms fuelled her depression and suicidal thoughts.

Visibly nervous in her pink floral dress, Kaley G.M. , now 21, testified on Thursday that her addiction began at the age of six, watching YouTube videos.

“I was at a young age, and I would spend all my time on it,” Kaley told jurors. “Anytime I tried to separate myself from it, it just didn’t work.”

Even when she was bullied on Instagram, she stayed on the app. “If I was off, I would just feel like I was missing out.”

The Addiction

Kaley’s lawyer, Mark Lanier, sought to portray her as an emotionally fragile user ensnared as a child by algorithms designed to keep her scrolling.

She described sneaking her phone back at night after her mother made her leave it in the living room. “I would be really upset,” she said, when denied access.

Court records, Lanier said, indicate that on one day, she was on Instagram for 16 hours.

She told of heavy filter use from a young agemaking her eyes bigger, her ears smaller. The jury was shown a video in which she complained about being fat. Shown a banner featuring dozens of her Instagram pictures, Kaley said, “almost all of them have a filter on.”

Asked if her life, health, sleep, and grades would have been better without social media, Kaley answered: “Yes.”

The Defence

But under cross-examination, a different picture emerged. Kaley testified about feeling neglected, berated, and picked on by family members. She described not feeling safe at home and being relentlessly yelled at by her mother.

The defence argues that her depression and anxiety were caused by a dysfunctional family and offline troublesnot by social media.

The Surprising Twist

In a development that startled the courtroom, Kaley said she would like to become a social media managercapitalising on the skills she has built since childhood.

The admission cuts against the narrative of irreparable harm and will likely feature in the defence’s closing arguments.

The Stakes

Kaley’s case is the first of three trials expected in the same court that will help determine whether Google (which owns YouTube) and Meta (which owns Instagram) deliberately designed their platforms to encourage compulsive use among young people, damaging their mental health in the process.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg took the stand last week and pushed back against accusations that his company had done too little to keep underage users off its platform and had profited from their presence.

The Bigger Picture

The outcome of the Los Angeles trial is expected to establish a standard for resolving thousands of lawsuits that blame social media for fueling an epidemic of depression, anxiety, eating disorders, and suicide among young people.

Similar lawsuits, including some brought by school districts, are making their way through federal court in Northern California and state courts across the country.

The trial is expected to last until late March. Kaley’s testimonyof a six-year-old hooked, a teenager sneaking her phone, a young woman still seeking a career in the industry that she says harmed herwill be central to the jury’s decision.

{Source: IOL}

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