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Brian Lehrer: It's the Brian Lehrer show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. Coming up later in the hour, Sam Sanders and you on anything from the Oscars last night. Now we turn to what's being seen as a landmark trial regarding social media addiction. After a month of hearings, jurors are now deliberating on whether or not social media companies should be liable for harm caused to children. It was brought by a 20-year-old woman, this lawsuit, against Meta's Instagram and Google's YouTube for optimizing their products to her mental and physical detriment.

Though it's not getting all that much coverage, legal scholars like Columbia's Tim Wu, for example, and many media outlets are comparing this trial, at least potentially, to the big tobacco trial from more than half a century ago, which ushered in more successful lawsuits against tobacco companies. A lot of money that went into anti-smoking programs and helped move Americans away from smoking tobacco. Joining us now to break down the trial and what it all could mean for the future of social media is David Streitfeld, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter covering tech for the New York Times. Hey, David, thanks for coming on. Welcome back to WNYC.

David Streitfeld: Hi, thanks for having me.

Brian Lehrer: The plaintiff in this case is identified as Kaylee, or KGM, her initials in Los Angeles County Superior Court documents, though they're keeping her full identity anonymous because of her age. The lawsuit accuses Instagram and YouTube of making content deliberately addictive to children. Can you give us the outline of her case?

David Streitfeld: Her argument is that she had a bad childhood, and social media made it worse. Her lawyer equated the social media companies to drug pushers. The pusher in your local park just wants money for his drugs. He doesn't care if you have to rob your grandmother to do it. Kaylee is arguing that social media was designed, was built, to steal her attention, to addict her and that it did, and that it broke her, and this was a very bad thing to do to a young child.

Brian Lehrer: Does she say how it broke her?

David Streitfeld: The argument is that these social media, the platforms are designed to addict you, to compel you to stay on hour after hour after hour. Things like the continuous feed, so you're on Facebook or almost anything else, and you can never get to the bottom of it. I mean, if you're reading a magazine in the real world, sooner or later you get to the last page. On social media, you never get to the end. You keep getting these little dopamine hits to keep going, and so you just stay on it. It is designed to keep her on it, that's the argument, to her detriment.

Brian Lehrer: To her detriment in terms of being able to succeed in school or her self-image in some ways, or what detriment?

David Streitfeld: Being able to function in life. I don't think the argument is that it is literally ruining her life. The argument is it is just keeping her online all day long. She's talked about being online for 16 hours, and that, by definition, is hurting her.

Brian Lehrer: YouTube and Instagram are the two social media platforms she's focusing on. Is she alleging different kinds of harm from each?

David Streitfeld: Most of the focus is on Meta, which owns Instagram. It's not really on Facebook. She wasn't on Facebook. YouTube is definitely the less important defendant here. YouTube maintains that it's not really a social media company at all. Its argument is that it really shouldn't even be part of this trial. The focus is definitely on Instagram.

Brian Lehrer: One of the other ways that they push back, I've read, is that Kaylee had a very troubled home life to begin with. There were so many factors in her family, or a few big factors in her family, impacting her mental health that they can't even tease out what effect social media had, or blame social media primarily. Can you flesh that out for us a little bit? What do we know happened in her childhood, and how is it coming up in court?

David Streitfeld: Her childhood was very difficult. Her father left home when she was four. She did not have a stable father figure. There's a lot of abuse, a lot of yelling. A sibling, I think, who tried to commit suicide. It was a life filled with trouble so far. The way I see it is this is putting two contrasting philosophies that are deeply ingrained in this country. It's putting them up against each other. One is that if you have something wrong with you, if something's going wrong in your life, there is someone responsible, a government, a company, a shadowy coalition, and you need to hold them to account and punish them for it. That's essentially what Kaylee is arguing.

The other argument is the one that the companies that are defendants are using, which is your life is up to you. You're in control of your life. If you're an addiction, it is your fault. You should know, or your parents should know that at a certain point, you've just got to turn off social media or you've got to turn off the phone. We're not to blame here. We're just offering a service that nearly everybody likes.

Brian Lehrer: Is this plaintiff the best possible plaintiff for this case? If this is such a landmark that it's supposed to set the template for more than a thousand other cases that are waiting in the wings, is what I read. If this plaintiff had a particularly troubled childhood where there might be more evidence than with some other people that her home life was the primary driver of mental health problems, is she the best possible plaintiff here?

David Streitfeld: I see your argument, but on the other hand, if you had someone who was a model student, who had lots of friends, who goes to Harvard and is a huge success there, the companies would argue, "Hey, what's the problem here? Social media. It's great. This woman's at Harvard now." I understand why the lawyers chose her. We'll see shortly. If the verdict goes against the companies, Kaylee was a great choice for the first plaintiff here. If the companies don't suffer much or don't suffer at all, she'll be a bad plaintiff.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, you want to weigh in here or ask our guest, David Streitfeld, tech reporter for the New York Times, a question as we lay out this case in Los Angeles and the claims of the defendant that social media companies have caused her mental and physical harm. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. Call or text. Is this resonating for you? Especially if you're in Kaylee's age group and have really grown up with social media and think, "Oh yes, this sounds like me," or, "This sounds like someone I know," or parents of people in the age group. 212-433-WNYC, or any lawyers for that matter, on this. 212-433-WNYC, 433-9692 on the social media trial now, I guess, in the hands of the jury, right, David, in LA?

David Streitfeld: Right. It was in the hands of the jury all day Friday. The usual thinking, anything can happen. The usual thinking is the jury is just going to say, "We do not think the defendants are at fault here. The weekend's coming, and we want to get our lives back." They tend to do it relatively quickly, efficiently on a Friday. They're meeting again today. Again, anything can happen. This bodes a little less well for the defendants.

Brian Lehrer: Would a win in this case for the plaintiff actually change the way platforms deploy certain tools like infinite scrolling, that's an Instagram thing, keeps going to the next thing, and autoplaying videos on YouTube? Is it more about the fact that individual users can now seek damages in individual cases?

David Streitfeld: If the verdict goes sharply against the social media companies, it will definitely be at least a symbolic defeat for them, which they rarely have, and they will be vulnerable at least to public pressure. Legally, I'm sure they will instantly appeal. That will take a while. These cases do get into First Amendment concerns. Probably on appeal, the First Amendment side of things will be front and center, and that's going to be a barrier for the plaintiffs. Just like anything else in America, this will be litigated for probably quite a while.

Brian Lehrer: Listener writes, "This lawsuit is reminiscent of the tobacco case, but that case seems stronger as there was abundant information around in the '80s regarding the harmful effects of smoking. There seem to be no loud guardrails protecting children from social media 20 years ago." Actually, I'm not sure if this text is making the case that the argument is stronger here or stronger there. It's a little confusing to me. What about these comparisons that are being made in many places with the lawsuits against Big Tobacco?

David Streitfeld: There is some comparison, but with Big Tobacco from the beginning, meaning the mid-'60s, you had the government on the side of the critics. The government came out and said, "We have determined that smoking is bad for you." That really helped all the private lawsuits, that helped the shift in public opinion. Even so, it took 10, 15, 20, 25 years until things like smoking on airplanes was completely eradicated. It's a slow process even for tobacco.

With social media, the companies are even richer than the tobacco companies were, and it's somewhat harder to see the effects of what's going on. There's a lot of evidence that students are not doing as well in school, that children and adults have fewer friends now, they go out less outdoors, all things like that. You can't really definitively connect them to what social media is doing the way you soon could connect lung cancer to cigarettes. There are some parallels, but social media, in the best scenario for its critics, is going to have a tougher road.

Brian Lehrer: Some texts coming in. Listener writes, "I'm 33 and can relate to her. Even as an adult, I see how it affects my mental health. I had to delete Instagram because it was addicting, and I'm much happier." Another listener writes, "Gen Z here. If there's one thing I wish I never picked up is social media. You can quit vaping, similar Gen Z vice. Social media is so embedded in our lives." Another listener writes, "I agree with the premise of Brian's query." The particular question I asked earlier. Listener writes, "A representative from a healthy home environment who nevertheless went off the rails would present a stronger case. Heaven knows there are many such young Americans."

Marilyn in Mountain Lakes, you're on WNYC. Hi, Marilyn.

Marilyn: Hi. Thanks for taking my call. I really affirm the addictive process, the addictive nature of the social media. I know it's hard to prove, but in the meantime, my whole thing is to protect kids because I heard once that addiction is a disease of loneliness and isolation. Nobody wants kids going through that. I support the case, and I hope it brings attention to the suffering that's caused because addiction takes money, time, and relationships away from people's lives. Thanks for listening.

Brian Lehrer: You told our screener you're a therapist. Can you tell any-

Marilyn: I am.

Brian Lehrer: -anecdote?

Marilyn: Oh, yes. I had so many clients, and it's hard. It's like an invisible addiction. There was a lot of work on what are the-- You look at the effects. You can't always prove the causes, but you look at the effects. When I said it takes time, it takes money, and it steals relationships, folks had-- I just had one person in particular. They had to find a group to get the recovery that we get from AA, or I'm in a program for food addiction. They had to get into a group to get the recovery they needed.

If you need a group to recover from an addiction, you have an addiction. Nobody joins one of those groups to say, "Oh, I just need a little help." We go because we need to get help emotionally, physically, and spiritually, peer support, in getting rid of this addiction. Yes, I really hope people will take this very seriously. In the meantime, the parents will really be finding alternatives and really spending more time in with their kids. Time and attention, and presence.

Brian Lehrer: On this. Thank you so much for your call. Listener writes, "I teach in this topic. An important similarity to the tobacco case is that social media companies, in particular Meta, did their own internal research that demonstrated a negative impact on a large portion of teens' mental health." Listeners, maybe some of you heard the excellent New Yorker Radio Hour interview with the author Jonathan Haidt, who's very much on this topic this weekend.

David, I don't know if you're familiar with some of what he was revealing to David Remnick there. Part of what he was citing was documents from Meta, and I think also another company, where people who were working inside were basically doing what this listener writes, acknowledging that there was a negative impact and that it could be seen as addictive. I don't have the exact words, but I don't know if those kinds of documents came up in the trial. They were interesting for me to hear in the interview.

David Streitfeld: They've come up in the trial, and frankly, they've come up fairly frequently for Meta over the past whatever, seven, eight, nine years. There's been whistleblowers, there's been reports that have leaked from inside. There's been tell-all books. Somewhat to my surprise, none of this has actually created any mass movement to rein in Meta. You always hear people saying these companies, social media is addictive. I'm always puzzled that if many people felt that, Congress, always responsive to what its voters are thinking, would be acting to control social media.

Either the number of people who feel it's a problem are a minority, or I don't know. With cigarettes, the society moved away from smoking. I don't feel that starting to happen with social media yet, for whatever reason.

Brian Lehrer: Joyce in Manhattan here on WNYC. Hello.

Joyce: I have a couple points that I'll make and then listen to the response off the line. Australia, I believe, made social media illegal for people under 16 or something. They must have done that with good reason and some proof of detrimental effects. I also, disregarding what their guest just said, I don't see that Congress has acted for the majority of American views in the last couple of years. I did see all the social media guys standing behind who at the inauguration because they're obviously giving money, so they get a lot of money. I don't think that's a strong point, that if the population was against it, Congress would do something. Look at the war we're in now. Okay, thanks.

Brian Lehrer: Joyce, thank you very much. To that point, we have another caller who we're not going to have time to get to, but Mike in Bayshore, I see you. Call us again on something else. Mike is saying, "This is two evils battling. I don't think social media should be brought to heel by the tort system." I guess Joyce's call is a response to that without even knowing that he was on the line.

The tort system may be a last resort here because the social media companies have so much power over the government that would otherwise make laws like Australia did, that this is what people have to resort to, civil suits. Can you compare Australia and the United States in this respect?

David Streitfeld: Australia certainly went ahead and did something. It's unclear, first of all, what effect the law is having, how many people are following it. It's going to be many years before we know if the law actually worked the way the people who put it there intended. I certainly agree, for critics of social media, this lawsuit and the lawsuits that will follow it here, there are last-ditch attempts to bring the companies, particularly Meta, to heel. Congress didn't do it. Regulators under President Trump are not going to do it. Lawsuits are their last and maybe their only hope at this point.

Brian Lehrer: As we run out of time, your article on this is headlined "Social Media Addiction Trial Nears End. Society Long Ago Rendered Its Verdict." Your article ends, "All future engagement will be with a machine." On Facebook, "Content generated by artificial intelligence is already being prioritized over friends and family." Yikes. Connect your headline and your last line.

David Streitfeld: My argument is that social media had this brief period, 10 years, 15 years, where it, if you're idealistic, had many things going for it. Everybody in the world could speak to everyone. Also, as this case reveals, there were many problems with it. My worry as a journalist is that social media is evolving into something that will make people nostalgic for the situation they have with it now.

Brian Lehrer: There we leave it with David Streitfeld, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter covering tech for the New York Times. We'll see anytime now, I guess, the verdict in this trial, which is in the hands of the jury. Thanks for talking about it with us.

David Streitfeld: Thanks for having me.

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