Big Tech on Trial

A landmark case on social media’s harm to teens hit the stands yesterday.  

The plaintiff, a 19-year old woman identified as KGM, alleges that the companies behind Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Snapchat built addictive algorithms that caused her serious mental-health struggles. 

While Big Tech has long been shielded from liability for user-generated content under the 1996 Communications Decency Act, this is the first of ~22 similar cases (representing ~1,600 plaintiffs) targeting platform designs—features like infinite scroll, autoplay, and algorithmic recommendations. Plaintiff lawyers are borrowing from a Big Tobacco-era playbook, introducing internal documents to show companies understood their products’ harms while publicly denying them.

Tech firms claim the case cherry-picks evidence and ignores safety tools already in place. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is expected to testify; Snap and TikTok have already settled.

CHRISTIAN PERSPECTIVE
As courts discuss the effects of social media, it’s a good moment for personal reflection on social media’s effect on our lives, relationships, and heart-habits. Whatever tools or technology we adopt, our aim should be to use them wisely and in ways that increase the fruit of the Spirit in us. 

“Walk by the Spirit and you will certainly not carry out the desire of the flesh… The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.”
Galatians 5:16, 22-23a (CSB) (read full passage)