YouTube has lodged an appeal against the verdict in a landmark social media addiction lawsuit in Los Angeles, thereby contesting the jury’s determination that the company deliberately engineered its platform to habituate young users, with scant regard for their welfare.

Counsel representing YouTube lodged a notice of appeal on Monday in the Los Angeles County Superior Court, a mere week after Meta, likewise a defendant in the proceedings, submitted its own notice of appeal.

The legal representatives are anticipated to delineate their appellate arguments in subsequent court submissions.

The litigation pertained to a 20-year-old woman who alleged that she developed an addiction to social media during childhood, which exacerbated her pre-existing mental health difficulties.

The jury determined that negligence on the part of both Google-owned YouTube and Meta constituted a substantial contributing factor to the harm sustained by the young woman, identified in court proceedings solely by her initials, KGM, and her given name, Kaley.

The jury awarded her $3 million in compensatory damages and recommended an additional $3 million in punitive damages.

Her lead counsel, Mark Lanier, stated in a press release last week following Meta’s appeal that Kaley’s legal team anticipates the appellate court will “continue the careful application of the law to this case, affirming the verdict of the trial court.”

José Castañeda, a spokesperson for Google, elucidated in a communiqué last week that YouTube intended to lodge an appeal, contending that “these are standard motions for this case to move forward.”

Meta and Google each filed post-trial motions seeking a de novo trial; the presiding judge, Carolyn B. Kuhl, denied these motions in early June.

Throughout the five-week trial, one of YouTube's central contentions was that its platform—which facilitates video sharing and streaming—does not constitute a social media platform.

Throughout the trial, legal representatives from both YouTube and Meta persistently interrogated whether the evidence and arguments presented infringed upon statutory protections afforded to technology companies concerning content disseminated by third parties.

Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act exonerates these corporations from legal liability for such material.

Conversely, the plaintiff’s counsel concentrated on design attributes, such as autoplay functions, which they contended could engender more protracted and less deliberate engagement with the platforms.

Kaley’s case constituted a landmark lawsuit, the verdict of which could determine the trajectory of thousands of analogous actions alleging that social media companies deliberately inflicted harm.

TikTok and Snap Inc., the parent company of Snapchat, were also initially named as defendants in the proceedings, yet each reached a settlement for undisclosed sums prior to the commencement of the trial.