A person holds up a phone full of social media apps. (EPA/Yonhap)
The 6-year-old practically vibrates with joy. She uploads her first video on YouTube, one in which she plays games with her friends. The glee she feels prompts her to sing about sea lions juggling fish.
It did not take long for Kaley Glenn-Mills, now 20, to lose the spark she had when she was 6. At the age of 10, Kaley started to despise her body for being “too fat.” When she was 12, she wrote a song about “sad girls” and uploaded a video of it on YouTube.
When asked by a lawyer what she had been battling against, Kaley replied, “Depression.” When the depression got worse, she resorted to self-harm.
US Attorney Yang Soo-seok was one of the lawyers who represented the plaintiff in the K.G.M. v. Meta et al. case, the first case in the world to hold a social media company responsible for teen addiction in March.
Yang, along with around 20 other lawyers from 12 law firms, strived night and day for months to prove that Meta and Google were held accountable for teen addiction.
Finally, on March 25, the Los Angeles County Superior Court’s jury of 12 handed down a verdict that found the companies responsible for compensation and stated that Kaley be paid US$6 million, including US$3 million in punitive damages.
This was the first ruling that shattered the seemingly impregnable logic used by social media companies to avoid taking social responsibility.
“Do you know how much it hurts to see such a lovable child be so self-degrading?” he said.
“Mark Lanier, a lawyer representing her, told her she wasn’t fat at all and that no child should be thinking of themselves the way she did. A hush fell over the court,” Yang said.
The Hankyoreh spoke to Yang over videoconference on July 16.
Parents who lost children as a result of social media addiction stand outside a court in Los Angeles on Feb. 5, 2026. (AP/Yonhap)
The trial that sparked public debate on the dangers of social media addiction
Kaley’s case is being heard in the appellate court due to appeals filed by Meta and Google. However, intense public debate has been sparked by the risks of addiction revealed in the first trial alone.
The case has provided a strong basis for regulation in countries around the world that are pushing to restrict platforms’ addictive features. Even Korean President Lee Jae Myung mentioned the case during a report on Thursday.
“Social media platforms have designed their algorithms in a way that borders on manipulation, knowing full well that it leads to excessive engagement,” he said, arguing that user addiction is not a side effect of social media, but rather the result of deliberate design.
“When we started working on the case, our chances looked slim,” Yang said. “We all had our doubts, thinking ‘Doesn’t everyone spend time on social media?’ or ‘Is it as dangerous as drug or alcohol addictions?’ However, we overturned those assumptions one by one during the trial.”
Kaley first started using YouTube when she was 6, and Instagram when she was 9. She remained immersed in social media throughout her teenage years. She hid her phone at school and burrowed under her sheets at home to stay online up to 16 hours a day.
She whiled away time by uploading countless photos of herself with beauty filters and scrolling through other people’s posts. She even made around 20 new accounts for each platform so her content could accrue more likes.
“I stopped engaging with family because I was spending all my time on social media,” said Kaley. Throughout this period, Kaley was plagued by depression, ADHD, social anxiety disorder, body dysmorphia, and other disorders.
Even when she stood in court as a witness in February, Kaley told the jury that she woke up at 3:50 am, getting ready for four hours.
Kaley’s attorney told her that no matter the shape of her body or her hairstyle, she was a beautiful young woman and asked whether she could see that. Kaley shook her head.
Her lawyer then asked whether she would try to acknowledge that. Kaley said that she would.
When asked again if she hoped to reach a point where she felt that way, Kaley cautiously responded that she did.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg leaves a court in Los Angeles, California, on Feb. 18, 2026, after testifying in a lawsuit regarding teen social media addiction. (AFP/Yonhap)
Refuting social media platforms’ freedom of speech defense
Many lawsuits in the US in the past challenged the harmful effects of social media but repeatedly hit a wall. This was due to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which says social media companies bear no liability for user-posted content. Another formidable shield is the First Amendment to the US Constitution, as platforms cite freedom of speech to defend their recommendation algorithms.
Ultimately, most such cases were dismissed or produced rulings favorable to social media companies.
“Our legal team presented a completely new argument,” Yang said on how his team got around such defenses. “We argued that it wasn’t the content itself, but the various features built into social media platforms that were designed to stimulate addiction. This allowed us to overcome the well-established defenses that had historically limited similar claims.”
His team focused on medical evidence of the effects of social media companies’ addiction business model on the brain. Dr. Anna Lembke, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford University and a witness for the plaintiff, likened social media to a casino slot machine, saying unpredictable stimuli such as the auto-refresh function amplify the brain’s dopamine response.
She also said recommendation algorithms tailored to user preferences amplify the effects of dopamine while the infinite scrolling function compels users to endlessly explore entertainment. Autoplay, which automatically plays the next video, turns passivity into the driving force of consumption, the professor added. Constant notifications also cause users who struggle to break free from social media to relapse.
Instagram’s beauty filter feature evokes excessive engagement by automatically enhancing a user’s face to make it appear that makeup is worn. Uploading photos using this feature attracts mental rewards such as “likes.”
Since her childhood, Kaley also took and uploaded thousands of selfies with beauty filters. She thus found it increasingly difficult to accept her real appearance and her body dysmorphia, an excessive preoccupation with perceived physical flaws, also worsened.
When her legal team gathered the photos she posted on social media into a banner 15 meters long, it reached both ends of the courtroom.
Yang (left) and other attorneys representing the plaintiff in their landmark social media addiction case stand outside the courthouse in Los Angeles following their court victory on March 25, 2026. (courtesy Yang)
Social media ignores addiction, bans term at workplace
In his closing argument, Yang asked the jury to consider the childhood that had been taken away from Kaley. He also urged them to remember who she had been before her social media addiction — the child who sang innocently and wrote letters in crooked handwriting telling her mother that she was the best of the best.
“That child, once so creative and musically gifted, began to suffer from constant anxiety and depression after starting to use social media, growing so self-conscious that even standing in front of people got tough for her,” he said. “When asked how to compensate for those lost years, several jurors shed tears. I think our team’s sincerity must’ve come across.”
Meta and Google said Kaley’s personal issues were at fault. Citing how her parents divorced when she was 3 and that she was bullied at school, they blamed her “personal circumstances.” Both companies even presented a recording of her mother yelling on Kaley’s account as evidence of her troubled home environment that damaged her mental health.
Kaley’s legal team then challenged Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg by citing the parable of the Good Samaritan, saying, “You have the choice of helping, neglecting or exploiting these emotionally vulnerable children. As a rational company, shouldn’t you refrain from exploiting them [for social media profits]?”
Both companies denied any intent, claiming that they only provided “valuable content” to users and did not stimulate addiction. Cristos Goodrow, YouTube’s vice president of engineering, insisted that his site is harmless, saying that it was “very good” that his own children watch YouTube for five to six hours a day.
In response, Kaley’s team presented internal documents from the two companies aimed at raising user engagement time. Notable examples included one from Google on the goal of a billion daily viewing hours by 2016 and another from Meta outlining a three-year plan to boost revenue to US$25 billion and user engagement time by 12%.
Another Meta document said the more people belonged to a demographic like adolescents, women, and those with low socioeconomic status or emotional vulnerability, the more likely they would grow obsessed with social media due to side effects such as social comparison.
Arturo Bejar, a former senior engineering and product leader at Facebook responsible for user safety, testified in court that he submitted on multiple occasions cases of harm to minors to the company’s executives — including Zuckerberg — but received no response, adding that he used the term “problematic use” within the company since “addiction” was taboo there.
Notice of minor’s YouTube viewing demand during trial, parental worry over addiction
“Why do companies that run social media for free make such vast amounts of money? It’s because of their advertising business model — the ‘attention economy’ — that generates money the longer as many users stay on the app as possible,” Yang said. He added that social media companies are glossing over the problem of teen addiction despite being fully aware of it.
“The Chinese version of TikTok uses an ‘age assurance’ technology to estimate a user’s real age based on behavioral patterns and chat histories,” he said. “But this isn’t applied to the US version, allowing teens to sign up by lying that they’re adults. Why? It’s all about money. They don’t want to lose the countless teenage users in the US.”
Yang said he empathizes with Kaley’s case because of his five children ages 6-16. During the trial, he even received a YouTube notification saying his kids asked for more viewing time.
“It’s ironic that even as parents grapple with the effects of teen YouTube addiction, their children still want to keep watching it,” he said. “Every parent probably feels a similar sense of crisis. That’s why holding social media platforms accountable is especially important for the sake of the next generation’s future.”
By Shin Da-eun, staff reporter
Please direct questions or comments to [english@hani.co.kr]
