The lawyer who took Meta to court – and won millions

Read time: 3 mins

In brief…

• Lawyer Matthew Bergman, part of a legal team which successfully sued Meta and YouTube, tells Jon Sopel how documents from the social media companies helped win the case for his team, as well as a 20-year-old woman.
• Bergman says these showed how companies deliberately target children and teenagers and make their platforms as addictive as possible.
• He says the arguments made by the social media companies today, rejecting these claims, are the same as previously made by tobacco companies about health issues.

What’s the story?

For New York attorney Matthew Bergman, just getting to court was an achievement.

In early 2026, he represented a 20-year-old woman suing Meta and YouTube for mental health harm after she became addicted to their social media platforms. After an eight-week trial at the end of March, she was awarded $6 million (£4.43m) in damages.

“No one thought these companies could be proceeded against, cases were getting dismissed before they even got started,” Bergman tells The News Agents.

“We were able to get the case filed, and we survived a motion to dismiss.

“We were able to find what these companies have known about their addictive products and how they're hurting kids.”

Bergman tells Jon Sopel how a jury in the trial found Meta not only negligent, but “malicious” in designing a platform it “knew was going to be harmful to the mental health of young people.”

Meta and Google have said they disagreed with the verdict and intend to appeal.

Social media ‘preying’ on vulnerable youth

But it was evidence from their own files that lost Meta and Google the trial, Bergman adds.

"The best evidence that they have designed addictive platforms, is their own documents," he says.

"They specifically use the word 'addiction' and talk about their goal as being addiction."

"The best evidence that they are targeting adolescents is the Meta document saying that to get teens, they have to target them as tweens."

A key term in Meta documents, Bergman says, is "addicts mentality".

"They are preying on vulnerable kids, and they know it."

Bergman says that before working on cases such as this – where the victim was known only as Kaley – he would have considered social media a “behavioural addiction”, and very different to alcohol or nicotine. Now, he’s changed his mind.

The jury in the trial found that both Meta and YouTube "intentionally" built their platforms to be addictive.

"What the research has shown is that the brain development of adolescents is different based upon the frequency of their social media use," Bergman.

"The way the brain gets wired up over during adolescence is impacted physiologically by the frequency of their social media use.

"So it is very similar to a tobacco addiction or a drug addiction."

Is social media as dangerous as tobacco addiction?

Social media companies have fought claims that their platforms harm people – much like tobacco companies did before cases against them began to be successful in the 1990s.

Its executives had previously testified in Congress to say that smoking did not cause lung cancer, and suggested other causes in people affected when legal cases were brought.

“We basically saw the same song and dance from the tobacco companies 20 years ago that we're seeing from the social media companies today,” Bergman says.

“The causal link between social media and mental health harms being worse among kids is absolute – although there are other exacerbating factors.”

And like lung cancer, Bergman adds, some people are more susceptible to the dangers and addictive properties of social media, and accuses Meta of deliberately targeting children and teens in the same way tobacco companies did.

“Meta said to get them as teens, we have to hook them as tweens,” he says.

“So it is very much a conscious effort by a company to addict young people, to ensure their lifetime use of the  product.

“The impact of these deliberate design decisions that the social media companies have, in many cases, are fatal.”

Listen to the latest episode of The News Agents.