Landmark rulings in the United States this week found that Meta – the parent company of Facebook and Instagram – and YouTube were liable for designing social media products that cause harm to children.

Juries in California and New Mexico found that children were harmed, not by the content they were watching, but by the products themselves because they were designed to be addictive.

Tech blogger Kevin Andrews says for years questions have been raised about various negative aspects of social media, but what makes this case so important is the fact that social media platforms, and what they offer, are designed to foster addiction.

“It’s one of the first major jury decisions to directly connect platform design with harm to a young user’s mental health,” Andrews told the Tim Powers Show on VOCM. “For years, the conversation has been more moral, political, cultural, and parental, but I think now, it’s become legal. And so…once a jury accepts that…features like that infinite scroll, the auto play, the recommendation engines, the likes, the followers, the filters are not just neutral tools, but are now seen as an addictive architecture.”