She spent 16 hours on Instagram in a day. It's up to a jury to decide if Meta is to blame

"I stopped engaging with my family because I was spending all my time on social media," Kaley told a jury in Los Angeles during a landmark lawsuit against Meta and Google, two of the biggest companies in the world. TikTok and Snapchat, which were also named in her original suit, settled out of court."

"They hid the research. They knew that it was addictive. They gave us a false sense of security," Schott said, describing to the BBC what she learned from the trial. "Their public relations team just seemed to try and convince us that the world was all lollipops and unicorns.""

"Central to the case are questions of whether Kaley had an addiction to social media and whether social media companies designed their platforms to be addictive. If they did, the jury will need to decide what the companies owe to young people like Kaley who may have been harmed because of those designs."

A teenager named Kaley spent excessive time on Instagram, checking notifications constantly and spending up to 16 hours daily on the platform, which caused her to withdraw from family. Her case represents the first of over 2,000 similar lawsuits against Meta and Google, with TikTok and Snapchat having settled. The five-week trial examines whether social media companies intentionally designed addictive features. Parents like Lori Schott, whose daughter died by suicide at 18, believe Instagram exposed young people to harmful content while companies concealed research about addiction risks. The trial will determine what compensation companies owe to affected users.

Read at www.bbc.com