The 20-year-old American at the center of a landmark lawsuit against social media companies asserted on Thursday that YouTube and Instagram had fueled her depression and suicidal thoughts, a decline in her mental health that the defense attributed to her difficult childhood in a dysfunctional family.
Looking "nervous" in her pink floral dress, Kaley GM spent the morning explaining how she became addicted to social media, starting to watch YouTube videos at the age of 6.
"I was young and I spent all my time" on YouTube, the supermarket employee told a Los Angeles civil court. "I tried to stop, but it didn't work."
His case is being closely watched, as the outcome of his trial will set the tone for thousands of American families who accuse social networks of knowingly designing their platforms to make children addicted, thanks to their features – “likes”, notifications, infinite scrolling and autoplay of videos.
At 8 years old, she opened a YouTube account without her age being verified. And at 9, she bypassed the parental controls on the phone her mother gave her to secretly start using Instagram.
The child then spent up to 16 hours a day on this social network, her lawyer pointed out. There, she discovered the use of filters, capable of enlarging eyes, but also of slimming them.
It was, according to her, at that moment that she began to doubt herself. Years later, she would be diagnosed as suffering from social phobia and body dysmorphic disorder, an obsession with minor or imagined physical flaws.
– “Too hard to do without it” –
The audience was captivated by an Instagram video in which she, as a pre-teen, apologized to her followers.
"I'm sorry I look so ugly, I look so fat in this top," says the then-slender little blonde.
His lawyer displayed a banner of dozens of selfies he had taken over the years.
"Almost all of them were taken with a filter," the plaintiff sighed.
Around the age of 10, she fell into depression, began to have suicidal thoughts and to self-harm.
Her mother, who pushes her to go to therapy from the age of 12, regularly confiscates her phone, which causes crises.
"I was really very upset, I was screaming and crying," she said.
Has her intensive use of social media degraded her sleep, her grades, her ability to make friends? "Yes," she replied to her lawyer, Mark Lanier.
So why not stop using them, especially now that she's feeling better?
"Because I can't, it's too hard to do without it," replied the young woman, who is considering resuming her studies to become a social media manager in a company.
TikTok and Snapchat have reached a financial settlement with Kaley GM to avoid a trial – but remain concerned about a wave of upcoming lawsuits, reminiscent of those brought against the tobacco industry in the 1990s.
Google, owner of YouTube, and Meta, which hosts Facebook and Instagram, have instead chosen legal confrontation.
– Chaotic childhood –
During the afternoon, YouTube's defense team got Kaley to admit that her parents were aware of the videos she was posting on the platform despite her young age.
Meta's was more incisive, detailing Kaley's chaotic childhood, to implicitly highlight that her family, presented as toxic, may have affected her more than her compulsive screen consumption.
With sober but ruthless questions, Phyllis Jones painted a portrait of a little girl whose parents divorced when she was three, and who was gradually abandoned by her father, who frequently mocked women's weight.
Mark Zuckerberg's lawyer pointed out that Kaley's sister had attempted suicide shortly before her breakdown. She also released recordings in which her mother can be heard yelling at her in vulgar language.
With pursed lips, Kaley, who has struggled her whole life with late-diagnosed attention deficit disorder, acknowledged that her mother sometimes hit her when she didn't understand her math homework in elementary school.
"She hadn't yet realized that I had a learning disability and thought I wasn't making an effort," she excused her.
The trial is expected to continue until mid-March.
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