Jury selection began on January 27, 2026, in what is being billed as a bellwether trial in Los Angeles Superior Court that could reshape the relationship between Big Tech and American families. The case centers on a 19-year-old identified only as K.G.M., who alleges she was addicted to social media from a young age and suffered severe mental-health consequences, and the court has pulled in thousands of related claims consolidated into coordinated litigation. It is fitting that this fight is coming to a jury, because ordinary Americans — not coastal tech elites or slick corporate lawyers — should weigh the human cost of these platforms.
The defendants named in the initial proceedings include Meta and Alphabet, the parent of YouTube, while ByteDance’s TikTok and Snap reached last-minute settlements and avoided the opening bell. That retreat should tell you everything: when the court of public opinion starts to close in, Big Tech quietly cuts deals to dodge full accountability. Mark Zuckerberg is even slated to testify, a rare moment when a CEO who once waved off criticism with corporate slogans must answer directly for choices his company made.
Plaintiffs argue, correctly in many respects, that social media companies deliberately engineered features to keep kids scrolling — from infinite feeds to algorithmic dopamine loops — all in the name of ad revenue. Conservatives should not be shy about calling this what it is: corporate greed weaponized against the most vulnerable among us. The tobacco comparison used by lawyers isn’t rhetorical flourish; it’s structural: companies designing products to hook users and profiting while communities pay the bill.
There is, of course, a legitimate conservative concern about judicial overreach and the First Amendment and Section 230 protections that have shaped the internet. Courts must be careful not to hand bureaucrats or trial lawyers the power to reshape speech online on a whim. But that caution does not excuse silence; accountability matters when businesses knowingly market harmful design to children and then hide behind legal doctrines.
This trial should be a wake-up call for parents, lawmakers, and conservatives who still believe in the primacy of family and community. We need stronger enforcement of age limits, tech designs that respect childhood development, and common-sense laws that restore parental authority rather than empower Silicon Valley. If conservatives lead with clear moral clarity — protect kids first, preserve free speech second — we can craft solutions that don’t hand the left new levers of censorship.
Let this courtroom be a starting point, not the final word. The bigger fight is cultural and political: reclaiming childhood from a surveillance-driven attention economy and reasserting responsibility where it was surrendered. Americans who value freedom and family must press our representatives to act, and to do so now, while juries are still remembering faces, names, and the real children harmed by manufactured addiction.
