Were you or your child harmed by YouTube?

A jury of twelve, needing nine to agree on each question, found that YouTube was negligent in the design or operation of its platform, that this was a substantial factor in causing harm, and that YouTube failed to warn adequately. Ten jurors found liability and two dissented. The jury awarded $3 million in compensatory damages, split 70% to Meta ($2.1 million) and 30% to YouTube ($0.9 million), and $3 million in punitive damages, assessed separately ($2.1 million against Meta and $0.9 million against YouTube). The total was $6 million: $4.2 million for Meta and $1.8 million for YouTube.

YouTube argued that it is not social media in the sense the claim assumed. On its own figures, the claimant’s viewing of YouTube Shorts averaged about one minute 14 seconds a day.

Judge Carolyn B. Kuhl refused Google’s and Meta’s motions to overturn the verdict or order a new trial. YouTube filed a notice of appeal in July 2026.

A 327-page complaint naming Alphabet (YouTube) alongside Meta, Snap and ByteDance, alleging gross negligence and public nuisance. New York City has about 1.8 million residents under 18. These are allegations, not findings.

Google is a defendant in the consolidated federal proceedings, in which the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation listed more than 3,000 pending actions in August 2026.

The BBC reported that the claimant’s lawyer, Mark Lanier, “accused YouTube of trying to take advantage of busy parents looking for a ‘digital babysitting service’” and told the jury, of Meta and YouTube: “These companies built machines designed to addict the brains of children, and they did it on purpose.” This is a lawyer’s opening argument, not evidence. The BBC also reported that lawyers for Meta and YouTube told the jury the claimant’s difficulties stemmed from other issues in her life.

The AP (Kaitlyn Huamani and Barbara Ortutay) reported that YouTube “argued that YouTube is not a form of social media, but rather a video platform akin to television”, and that both platforms’ lawyers “consistently pointed to the safety features and guardrails” available to users.

AFP reported that YouTube’s vice president of engineering, Cristos Goodrow, was pressed on the company’s “big, hairy, audacious goal”, set more than a decade ago, to increase viewer time to more than a billion hours a day by 2016. AFP quoted him: “YouTube is not designed to maximize time”, adding: “It’s designed to give people the most value...” It also quoted him: “we don’t want anybody to be addicted to anything”, and, on scrolling: “If they scroll, they’ll get kind of frustrated.” AFP reported that the plaintiff’s lawyer, Mark Lanier, had him detail features including recommendations and auto-play, and told jurors this enticed users to a “treadmill of continuous checking”. That phrase is the lawyer’s argument, not evidence. AFP also reported that Goodrow agreed children should not be losing sleep watching YouTube. This is AFP’s account of testimony; we have not seen the transcript.

According to AFP, the document presented the opportunity of YouTube playing “the digital babysitter” to children as young as eight, in a discussion of under-13s as the fastest-growing internet audience. The date and author are not stated. AFP does not confirm that the jury saw it.

A June 2012 internal email, produced by Google (Bates GOOG-3047MDL-03360356) and filed as an exhibit in the federal social media litigation, forwards “Notes from iOS Creator App review (6.7.12)”, a review of a planned video-creation app. Under “Value prop”, the notes state: “Socialcam & Viddy should not be the model this app is based on; they don’t get it right except for more FB usage” and “Goal is not viewership, it’s viewer addiction”. The names of the author and recipients are redacted in the filed copy, so we cannot say who wrote that line. The notes concern an app for creators and are not about children. This is a document quoted in a court filing, not a finding of a court. A copy of the exhibit is hosted on this site.

A YouTube UX Research presentation titled “Literature Review: Effects of Watching Digital Videos on Viewer Well-Being” (“UXRS Rapid Research”, April 2018), filed as an exhibit in the federal social media litigation, includes a slide headed “Excessive video watching is related to addiction”. It states: “Researchers feel that YT is built with the intention of being addictive”, with “tricks to encourage binge-watching (i.e. autoplay, recommendations, etc)”. Another slide states: “Notifications are a critical part of YouTube and contribute to addiction.” The slides summarise outside research, and the exhibit is a document quoted in a court filing, not a finding of a court. Google has contested the claims in these cases. A copy of the exhibit is hosted on this site.

YouTube’s autoplay feature plays the next recommended video automatically. Autoplay and algorithmic recommendations are among the design features that claimants in the US cases challenge.