PBS reports that Mark Lanier, an attorney representing KGM, concluded his closing remarks by showing the jury pictures of a gazelle surrounded by lions. The lions, Lanier said, don’t go after the strongest or fastest members of a herd—instead, they target, attack, and devour those that lack the strength to either fight back or escape.
A landmark social media addiction trial is coming to a close after jurors spent nearly a month listening to testimony from medical experts, platform engineers, and corporate executives, including Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
According to PBS, both sides began presenting closing statements on Thursday.
The lawsuit was originally filed on behalf of a plaintiff identified by the initials “KGM.” Attorneys for the 20-year-old woman described how their client began to develop an unhealthy relationship with social media at an early age. By the time that she was a teenager, KGM sometimes spent upwards of 16 hours per day on applications like Instagram. Her legal team says that KGM’s mental health suffered as a consequence, leading to exacerbated depression and suicidal ideation.
PBS reports that Mark Lanier, an attorney representing KGM, concluded his closing remarks by showing the jury pictures of a gazelle surrounded by lions. The lions, Lanier said, don’t go after the strongest or fastest members of a herd—instead, they target, attack, and devour those that lack the strength to either fight back or escape.
“I think that’s what we got in this case,” Lanier said.
Lanier’s statement appears to have been intended as a rebuttal to Meta’s general claims that KGM’s problematic use of social media is specific to her and more likely indicative of deep-seated mental health issues rather than an inherently dangerous product design.
On Thursday, Meta issued a statement reiterating some of its earlier arguments, saying that the jury’s task is decide if KGM’s “struggles would have existed without Instagram. Not one of her therapists identified social media as the cause.”
Lanier tried to address this in his closing remarks, saying that his client wouldn’t have wanted to share the details of her social media addiction with therapists for fear that her parents might have taken her phone away.
KGM is also suing YouTube. Attorneys for that company tried to distinguish between YouTube and more conventional social media platforms, arguing that YouTube doesn’t center around social interaction and therefore has less addictive potential than competing applications.
For KGM to win, at least nine out of the twelve jurors must find that that Meta and YouTube’s negligence was a “substantial factor” in causing KGM harm. If one or both platforms are found liable, the jury will also decide the amount of damages that KGM is entitled to receive, though any large award would most likely be appealed by the defendant companies.
Sources
‘IG is a drug’: jury to deliberate as US trial over social media addiction wraps up
Lawyers deliver closing arguments in landmark social media addiction trial
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