Written by John Pane, EFA Chair.
For years, concerns about children, smartphones, and social media have occupied a grey zone — intuitively alarming, politically contentious, and legally elusive. Fast forward to 2025 and Australia passes the social media ban that we had to have. Problem solved, right? Well, the government seems to think so. But I don’t.
Meanwhile in the US, a Los Angeles courtroom became the site of what could be the first jury trial to directly test whether major social media companies deliberately engineered their products to keep children compulsively engaged, and whether those design choices contributed to measurable psychological harm. (Interestingly, a few days before, TikTok settled a separate lawsuit on the eve of the trial. Terms of the settlement were confidential.)
The LA case, with Meta and You Tube named as defendants, is the first of a wave of lawsuits headed for trial this year that have been brought against social media companies by more than 1,000 individual plaintiffs, hundreds of school districts and dozens of state attorneys general. This case is the first of about 1,000 similar lawsuits moving through Californian and federal courts across the US. The outcome of this case, should it go against social media platforms (and I expect it will) is likely to cause more than a ripple in the social media platform pond.
I believe this trial is incredibly significant because it will force disclosure of the behaviours, ethics and deliberate choices of platforms. It will lay bare the machinations of these Big Tech corporations and how they purposefully maximise attention and engagement at the expense of user safety and welfare – and the harms are suffered by all users, not just children. The outcome of this trial is important – not because we finally get to unmask the villain “Scooby Doo” style or find an easy fix, but because of the judicially enforced disclosure and transparency requirements underpinning a jury trial. Jurors will review thousands of pages of internal documents, company research on children’s social media use, and testimony from senior executives at Meta and Google. For the first time, the public may get a sustained and unhindered look at how the most powerful digital platforms think about users, engagement, and profit. There is no prize for guessing where user safety fits into this equation.
I think what we are seeing here is a real tipping point against both social media platforms and Big Tech generally. This case is incredibly important as it reveals an uncanny likeness to the legal campaign against Big Tobacco in the 1990s, which accused cigarette makers of covering up what they knew about the harms of their products. And yes, I believe that the comparison between Big Tobacco and Big Social Media is both reasonable and valid. Time to grab the popcorn and 3D glasses.
Image credit: Sustainability Directory.