EDITORIAL: The long-awaited reckoning for Big Tech may finally have arrived, unfolding in American courtrooms with some unprecedented verdicts. Within just 48 hours, Meta and Google suffered significant legal setbacks over the harm their platforms have inflicted on young users: on March 24, a New Mexico jury ordered Meta to pay USD 375 million in damages after finding that its products had enabled child sexual exploitation, while just a day later in California, another jury directed Meta and YouTube to pay USD 6 million to the plaintiff, concluding that both companies had deliberately designed their platforms to be addictive for young users, engineering features intended to keep them hooked.
While regulators in Europe have long scrutinised major tech firms for anti-competitive and anti-democratic practices, it is accountability through the American legal system that was always going to be more likely to drive a deeper overhaul of how these platforms are designed and governed. And, this may just be the beginning: over 2,000 plaintiffs in the US are now pursuing coordinated lawsuits against Meta, Google, TikTok and Snap, signalling that the era of consequence may be underway. The road ahead will be far from smooth though, given the deep pockets, formidable legal firepower and a regulatory landscape in the US that has often tilted in favour of big business, but these verdicts suggest that sustained legal pressure may yet succeed where policy inertia has long stalled progress.
In the California case, the 20-year-old plaintiff recounted how her engagement with YouTube began as early as age six, followed by Instagram at nine, with this usage steadily escalating into dependency, leading to damaging consequences for her mental health. She developed depression, body dysmorphic disorder and social phobia, and began self-harming, attributing all these harms directly to her prolonged exposure to social media. What is crucial to note here is that the plaintiff’s experience was by no means an exceptional one. As her lawyers also argued, it reflected a broader pattern that has affected millions of young users globally, both online and in their real-world interactions. Central to this argument is the claim that core platform features, such as endlessly scrollable feeds and video auto-play, are intentionally designed to maximise user retention, reinforcing compulsive use.
Coming to the New Mexico lawsuit, brought by the state’s attorney general, it demonstrated how Meta allegedly facilitated predators on its platforms, effectively creating a marketplace for child sexual exploitation. Law enforcement conducted undercover sting operations to prove the company’s repeated failures to prevent such abuses. And echoing the California verdict, the case also highlighted Meta’s deliberate design choices aimed at maximising user engagement, which contributed to compulsive and addictive behaviour among young users. While both companies have stated their intention to appeal, the verdicts nevertheless send a clear signal about the scrutiny their practices now face.
But reforming social media giants cannot be left to the unfolding legal battles in American courts alone. Governments worldwide must act decisively to curb the harm these platforms inflict, especially on young and vulnerable users, and compel companies to redesign their products responsibly. Lessons can be drawn from Australia, which last year banned social media use for children under 16. In Pakistan, the Senate recently debated creating legal safeguards for safe, supervised social media use among those under 18. Such proposals warrant serious attention. As the Australian prime minister noted when announcing the ban, social media has increasingly become “a platform for peer pressure, a driver of anxiety, a vehicle for scammers and, worst of all, a tool for online predators”. The time has come to hold those responsible for these harms accountable and demand meaningful reform in how their platforms operate.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2026