“I was at a young age and I would spend all my time on it,” Kaley G.M., a 20-year-old California resident, testified when asked to explain why she thought she was addicted to YouTube.
“Anytime I tried to separate myself from it, it just didn’t work,” she added.
And even if she was bullied on Instagram, she still stayed on the app. “If I was off, I would just feel like I was missing out.”
In the highly anticipated testimony, Kaley G.M. took questions from her lawyer, who sought to paint a picture of an emotionally fragile user who was ensnared as a child to increase her use of YouTube and Instagram.
The landmark trial is expected to last until late March, when the jury will decide whether Meta, which owns Instagram, and Google-owned YouTube, bear responsibility for knowingly designing addictive apps that affected her mental health.
“I’m very nervous,” Kaley G.M., wearing a pale pink cardigan over a purple and white dress, said as she began her testimony, which will include cross-examination by lawyers from Meta and Google.
Kaley described scenes from her childhood in which her mother would have her leave her phone in the living room, but she would retrieve it once her mom went to bed, only to return it before morning.
Her lawyer Mark Lanier said court records indicate that on one day, she was on Instagram for 16 hours.
She also described her heavy use of filters on Instagram at a very young age to make her eyes bigger and her ears smaller.
Shown a banner of some of the dozens of Instagram pictures she had posted, Kaley said “almost all of them have a filter on.” When asked if she was still addicted to YouTube, she answered: “I don’t think I’m as addicted as I was,” adding that she mostly uses it for music.
Kaley G.M.’s case is set to determine whether Google and Meta deliberately designed their platforms to encourage compulsive use among young people, damaging their mental health in the process.
The outcome of the trial is expected to establish a standard for resolving thousands of lawsuits that blame social media for fueling an epidemic of depression, anxiety, eating disorders and suicide among young people.