Episode 963: The Landmark Social Media Addiction Case in California

Summary

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Podcast Summary: Newt’s World – Episode 963

The Landmark Social Media Addiction Case in California

Release Date: April 5, 2026
Host: Newt Gingrich
Guests: Joseph Van Zant (Beasley Allen Law Firm), Mark Lanier (Lanier Law Firm)

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Episode Overview

This episode dives into the historic California court case that held Meta (Facebook, Instagram) and YouTube (Google) liable for addiction-related harm to young people. Host Newt Gingrich speaks with the two lead attorneys, Joseph Van Zant and Mark Lanier, who explain the origins, complexity, and profound implications of this landmark litigation—offering a behind-the-scenes look at legal strategy, corporate accountability, and the challenge of protecting children from tech-driven addiction.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. How the Case Began and What Made It Landmark

• Origin Story:

  • The case was catalyzed by the 2021 whistleblowing of Frances Haugen, who leaked thousands of internal Facebook documents demonstrating the company’s awareness of the harms social media causes to children ([08:37]).
  • Law firms began investigating not just Meta but all social platforms, discovering longstanding knowledge and neglect by corporate leadership ([08:37–09:48]).

• Nature of Litigation:

  • This was not a class action; about 3,000 individual lawsuits were filed in front of one judge in Los Angeles ([09:59] Joseph Van Zant).
  • Bellwether cases were randomly picked to test the waters, the first of which was “KGM”—a young woman who suffered severe harm ([09:59–11:02]).

"We found out it wasn’t just Meta, it was these other social media companies as well that had known about these harms for years. And we're really doing nothing about it, continuing to choose growth over child safety." – Joseph Van Zant [08:37]

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2. Targeted Addiction: Corporate Knowledge and Malice

• Corporate Internal Documents:
  • Meta and Google had explicit internal comparisons to tobacco addiction and deliberate use of “addiction science” ([14:49]).
  • The companies’ strategy: to design features—not just content—that specifically addict the developing minds of children and teens ([12:08, 15:29, 34:33]).

“Our goal is not viewership, it’s addiction.” – (An internal Google document cited by Mark Lanier) [13:42]
“We’re like cigarettes for the eyes.” – Mark Lanier summarizing Meta’s own analogy [14:49]

• Legal Hurdles and Strategy:
  • Section 230 shielded platforms from liability based on content, but Lanier and Van Zant built the case around “design features built for addiction” rather than speech ([12:08–14:49]).
  • These features were modeled on “casino science” (e.g., slot machine intermittent rewards, infinite scroll, algorithmic targeting) ([35:40]).

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3. The Personal and Societal Impact

• Plaintiffs:
  • The defense tried to discredit the plaintiff (KGM) by blaming her family environment, but internal documents showed that vulnerable children were specifically targeted because they were more easily addicted ([17:33-18:47]).

“If somebody’s got a headache, you can’t take a rock and bash them in the head and say, hey, don’t blame me, they already had a headache.” – Mark Lanier [17:40]

• Discovery and Cross-Examination:
  • The trial accessed millions of pages of internal documents, made possible partly by whistleblowers, the rest through extensive discovery ([21:15-22:34]).
  • Cross-examinations, including of Mark Zuckerberg in open court, were pivotal, exposing duplicity and lack of transparency ([18:50–20:58]).

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4. Addiction Defined: The Science and Legal Proof

• Expert Testimony:

  • Stanford psychiatrist Anna Lembke, author of “Dopamine Nation,” explained to the jury that social media addiction meets all the classical clinical criteria for addiction ([35:40]).
  • Features like infinite scroll, algorithmic curation, and “bing” notifications were scientifically shown to foster dependency ([35:40–39:30]).

• Key Evidence:

  • The platforms used AI and behavioral data not just to keep kids engaged, but to intentionally hook vulnerable users ([35:40–39:30]).

“The AI engine—the AI has no morality. There’s no morality at all in this. And it’s all designed to keep you on there as long as humanly possible.” – Mark Lanier [38:53]

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5. Parental Responsibility vs. Platform Power

• Parental Controls Insufficient:
  • Meta’s own studies found parents are powerless against the sophistication of addictive design and algorithmic targeting. When results showed parent controls weren’t enough, Meta attempted to bury the findings ([39:47–42:07]).
  • The defense that “parents should have known better” was countered both in court and by expert testimony as unrealistic in today’s environment.

“There’s not a parent in this world that I know of, absent those who work at these big tech companies, perhaps, who stands a snowball’s chance against the algorithms and the power of these trillion-dollar companies.” – Mark Lanier [39:47]

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6. Legal and Political Implications

• Section 230 and Regulation:
  • The attorneys and Gingrich agree that existing laws like Section 230—which protect platforms—are outdated and allow companies to evade responsibility ([45:49–46:58]).
  • Bi-partisan legislative initiatives (e.g., Kids Online Safety Act) are ongoing, but face intense tech industry lobbying ([48:32–50:49]).

“They can put disinformation out, they can affect elections, they can do all sorts of things. And we need better transparency and some type of control.” – Mark Lanier [49:18]

• Broader Concerns:
  • The panel discusses how similar addictive algorithms affect areas like online gambling, emphasizing a broader need for regulation ([46:58–48:11]).

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7. Reflections: Family, Advocacy, and Hope for Change

• Personal Lessons:
  • Both lawyers describe how the case transformed their own approach to technology with their kids and grandchildren, advocating for delayed access and supporting grassroots parent initiatives like “Wait Until 8th” ([52:56–55:13]).

“There are companies now filling this gap, creating old-school phones that aren’t smartphones… But really, that’s a big part of why I’m doing this: to make sure this doesn’t happen to a new generation of kids.” – Joseph Van Zant [52:56]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Corporate Awareness:

  • “There were documents within Meta that said, you know, one day people are going to realize we’re tobacco.” – Mark Lanier [14:49]

• On Cross-Examining Mark Zuckerberg:

  • “[To Zuckerberg:] There are three things we could do with those people [vulnerable youth]… we can ignore them; we can help them; or we can target them and make them prey.”

• On Parental Powerlessness:

  • “Parental controls are totally inadequate. The companies know that. Meta did a study… The study came back and said parents are not equipped… Meta’s reaction was, ‘Make sure this study doesn’t go public.’” – Mark Lanier [41:00–41:30]

• On TikTok:

  • “TikTok in China serves spinach. TikTok in America serves opioids.” – Mark Lanier [45:49]

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Timeline / Timestamps for Key Segments

• Case origin & whistleblower impact: [08:37–09:48]
• Structure of litigation and KGM’s case: [09:59–11:02]
• Legal strategy focusing on “design features,” not content: [12:08–14:36]
• Internal tobacco comparisons: [14:49]
• Zuckerberg cross-examination recap: [18:47–20:42]
• Addiction science & infinite scroll: [35:40–39:30]
• Parental controls and corporate burying of negative studies: [39:47–42:07]
• Policy/regulation and legislative battle: [48:32–50:49]
• Personal reflections and family impact: [52:56–55:44]

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Conclusion

This episode unpacks not just the legal strategy of a landmark social media addiction case but also the societal, ethical, and political reverberations. It reveals the depth of corporate knowledge and their calculated strategies to addict children, the multi-year, multi-million-dollar legal grind it took to make a dent in Silicon Valley’s defenses, and the real, often overlooked, vulnerability of families. The attorneys offer actionable takeaways for parents, an urgent call for regulatory change, and a sense of hope that massive institutions can, eventually, be held accountable.

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For those who want an inside look at how the fight for accountability is taking shape in American courts—and the real stories behind the headlines—this episode is essential listening.

Transcript

[Mark Lanier]

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[Newt Gingrich]

Welcome to Newt's World podcast on the iHeart podcast network. Normally I would do a monologue, but frankly this interview is so fascinating with Joseph Van Zandt and Mark Lanier, the two lawyers who took on all of the big companies like Meta and Google and one that I think you're going to want to spend the whole time just listening to. Joseph and Mark. Coming up, we're going to discuss the landmark case in California where Meta and YouTube were deemed liable for addiction related harm. I'll be joined by the two attorneys who represented the plaintiff in the case, Joseph Van Sant of Beasley Allen Law Firm and Mark Lanier of the Lanier Law Firm.

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[Newt Gingrich]

I am really pleased to welcome my guests Joseph Van Zant of the Beasley Allen Law Firm and Mark Lanier of the Lanier Law Firm. Joseph and Mark, welcome and thank you for joining me on Newts World.

[Mark Lanier]

Mr. Speaker, it's our joy to be here.

[Newt Gingrich]

This was quite a case you all are involved in. A landmark moment. How does that feel?

[Mark Lanier]

Joseph can give his thoughts. He's been in the case a lot longer than I. I kind of came in at the late end of it to kind of run the last lap of the trial itself. But it's really important and it's really special. My wife and I have 12 grandkids and once we started seeing under the covers, if you will, and seeing the secret trove of documents, the truly what I would deem malicious, what the jury deemed malicious actions that were intentionally there to try and addict children and mess with their minds, it was very gratifying to have an independent jury come back and say they crossed the line way across the line.

[Newt Gingrich]

Joseph, what was your reaction?

[Joseph Van Zant]

Yeah, really the same. I've been doing this case for four years. I mean, so it's been four years of hard work overcoming Incredible hurdles. These companies did everything they could to avoid a trial. It's been a battle for four years, and then to get to trial and to be able to have Mark Lanier there to try the case was just an amazing moment. And the entire trial was really incredible. The jury was incredible. The judge was incredible, the atmosphere was incredible. The public interest in this case is such an important issue, and to really come out on top of the first of what we think is going to be many cases was a really incredible moment.

[Newt Gingrich]

How did this case evolve? It strikes me that it's really a profound landmark in terms of setting standards and setting liability responsibilities. So I'm just curious, since you were there, I guess, at the beginning, Joseph, how did this whole thing come about?

[Joseph Van Zant]

The whole thing really got started back in late 2021 when Francis Haugen, the original Facebook whistleblower, left the company, stole thousands of documents, and took those to Congress. And so, you know, we're sitting in our office one day and I get a call saying, you need to turn on what's happening right now in front of Congress. And we see these documents that she's laying out for Congress that are just terrible, terrible statements about harms that Meta knew it was causing kids over time, just terrible things. And that's really what got the investigation started. So our firm and several other firms around the country started investigating this further, and we found out it wasn't just Meta, it was these other social media companies as well that had known about these harms for years. And we're really doing nothing about it, continuing to choose growth over child safety. And so from there, we get clients, we start filing cases. And once you start doing that, you just get thousands of kids and parents, they find out they're not the only ones going through this. They're not the only ones having these problems. And we do what we do as lawyers, we file lawsuits, we take this to the court, and it really turned into a pretty large litigation that's got both a state court component in California, which is where this trial was, and then also there's a federal court component of it in Oakland as well as.

[Newt Gingrich]

But you started with, if I understand it, a very young woman who's identified as kgm. How does that evolve? Are you talking to a wide range of people?

[Joseph Van Zant]

I'll touch on that and then let Mark talk on the specifics of kgm. But, you know, we are in front of one judge in Los Angeles, Judge Carolyn Kuhl, and in front of her, There are about 3,000 individual cases pending. So this is not a class action. These are all individual lawsuits. And so we always tried bellwether cases, which are just test cases, essentially. And different judges picked those cases different ways. And this was essentially just random. The judge picked 24 cases randomly. We did depositions and discovery for all of those cases. And then the judge picked which cases would go to trial. And she selected nine cases for trial. And KGN's case ultimately was the first case. And so the judge picks these cases strategically. They're all different types of cases, different types of injuries, different ages. It really helps the parties learn how valid the cases are, what factors matter to juries, what factors don't matter. And so really, KGM becoming the trial case was a combination of random selection by the judge. And then ultimately the judge decided KGM's case was the one that should go to trial first.

[Mark Lanier]

He said it quite well. It's the tip of the spear. And so the point of it is in part to see what a jury would do, to see what issues are there for the court to see what the legal guardrails should be for these trials, Recognizing that if there's not some type of global resolution that results, that the judge is going to need to put those guardrails out there and give the instructions for other courts to try these cases, because they'll be dispersed out. So we are forming a roadmap of things to do and things not to do, and the court's forming its own roadmap, and it's a really good process. I just think the American legal system

[Newt Gingrich]

is amazing, given that, at least at this stage, I assume all this will be on appeal and there'll be a continuing fight for a little while. But if the premise is accepted that very young people were being hurt and being hurt by deliberate manipulation, isn't the potential total number of cases astonishing?

[Mark Lanier]

It could be. It depends in part on what it takes to prove these cases. Because you've almost got to have children who have been to counseling or who have been to therapy or who have some track record that shows that they've had serious problems as a result of this. I don't think you can just say, hey, my kid was on social media, so give me some money, I think those cases would flail. Because if it's not serious enough to go to counseling, if you don't have a suicide, if you don't have some serious damage, these cases are not economically viable for a lawyer to pursue. Remember, one of the difficulties we faced here was there's the Communication Decency act in the 90s that set up a section called Section 230. And it's been interpreted to mean that you can't hold these platforms accountable for bad content. So you can be on YouTube, you can be on Instagram, you can have sexual exploitation taking place with minors, you can have sex stalking of minors, you can have pornographic pictures being sent and being requested, you can have self harm videos, you can have suicide videos, you can have all of that content. And we cannot sue Instagram or Google, YouTube for putting those on their platform. The theory behind it was they're just a newspaper boy delivering the newspaper. You can't sue the newspaper boy for slander in the New York Times. However, the momentum is shifting a little bit there politically. But until that laws changed, we were restricted to trying to go after these companies under addiction. And what we did is we argued that they put features in place. This isn't content based. These are features that were designed specifically to addict the developing mind of a preteen and a teenager. And they targeted those children. Now all of the bad content got added on, but it was the features that we tried the case over because these design features are designed solely to addict. As one of the Google documents said that we use. Our goal is not viewership, it's addiction.

[Newt Gingrich]

You would think after the tobacco lawsuits that people would have learned in corporations that there are certain things that are just sort of huge bullseyes. Yeah.

[Mark Lanier]

Oh, speaker. There were documents within Meta that said, you know, one day people are going to realize we're tobacco and we're doing all the things big tobacco did and we're addictive like cigarettes. We're like cigarettes for the eyes. I mean, that's in the documents. And you just sit there as a lawyer, you know, I just sit there and I've done defense work. I still represent a number of corporations here in America. And I just pull my hair out and think, what nimrod did that? But yeah, it's in there.

[Newt Gingrich]

And you would think that their senior executives would see one of those and just say, wait a second, we better clean this whole thing up.

[Mark Lanier]

And we did have people inside Google around 20, 15, 16 and meta, even a little bit later say, we've got to quit using the word addiction. Let's just ban that from our vocabulary. We had the CEO of Instagram, I cross examined him, Adam Mosseri, and I had him in podcasts talking about how addicted it was. And he says, yeah, I probably shouldn't have used that word. I'm thinking, yeah, but you did use that word. And there's a reason you use that word. It's fascinating to me.

[Newt Gingrich]

And it's dangerous when in fact you're talking about children, because we have a pretty strong propensity still to be protective of children in a way that would not be true of adults. How long did you all have to work just to lay out and prepare the case?

[Mark Lanier]

Joseph, you did the start, so you ought to answer for the start. And I'll answer once we get into October.

[Joseph Van Zant]

Sure, yeah. So leading up Until October of 2025, I mean, it had been about a three year process of us filing cases, you know, ended up being hundreds and thousands of individuals. And defendants, of course, filed legal challenges to those cases, seeking to dismiss those based on Section 230, the First Amendment. So I mean, it was about a year or two battle of just legal fighting and briefing and oral arguments just to show that we could get over the legal hurdles. And as Mark mentioned, what makes this litigation different is that we didn't focus on content. These companies have faced challenges before, but they had never faced a litigation to where their own conduct was what was being criticized, their own design, their own features. And so we were able to overcome all those legal hurdles. And then it was another year of discovery into the lives of 24 individuals and 24 very brave and courageous kids and young adults who had to just have their lives inspected from the inside out by these companies and their lawyers in a very, very aggressive way. It was a big fight for several years to get to that point.

[Newt Gingrich]

I'm curious, was the corporate strategy to somehow discredit these children?

[Mark Lanier]

Oh, yeah. In fact, in the trial itself, their argument was she was a vulnerable kid who already had a messed up home life, whose mother would yell and scream at her and fat shame her. And she had difficulties with her sister who got hospitalized for anorexia, and her dad abandoned them at an early age and she had trouble with kids at school and bullying. And that was their position. Our position was basically, if somebody's got a headache, you can't take a rock and bash them in the head and say, hey, don't blame me, they already had a headache. There was internal, within meta, a number of documents and studies, and one in particular that we used that said if you take vulnerable children who have tough home life, don't have a lot of money, particularly if they're female and they have mental health challenges, if you induce them to become addicted to social media, it becomes a vicious feedback loop and it makes everything basically 10 times worse.

[Newt Gingrich]

Wait, wait, that's in their Document?

[Mark Lanier]

Oh, yeah, they've got a whole big chart on it. I mean, it's as plain as can be. When I started the cross examination of Mark Zuckerberg, because I got to cross examine him most of a day he had to show up live to court and, oh, his lawyers wanted him coming in the back door. And the judge is like, no, this is America. These are open courts. We don't care if you're as wealthy as can be or not. Everybody's treated the same. You come in through the front door. And he had bodyguards, but he had to come in through the front door. And my cross examination started. I said, Mr. Zuckerberg, would you agree with me? There are children in this world who are vulnerable. They don't have a great home life. They may have learning disabilities, low socioeconomics, difficulties with others. Those people exist, right? He says, yeah. I said, and they're not just out in the third world. We have them in America. Right. We have them in California. Right. We have them in our neighborhoods. Right. I said, now it seems to me there are three things we could do with those people. Number one, we can ignore them. Out of sight, out of mind. I don't see them. They're not on my radar. I'm just going to go about blissful and happy. True, true. Or two, we can help them. We can join organizations or help through churches, or we can try to find ways to help these children have any shot at success in life. True, True. I said, are. There's a third option. We can target them and make them prey. We can prey upon them and devour them and ruin them for profit. I said, why did Meta choose option 3? And that's sort of where we started.

[Newt Gingrich]

That must have been quite a moment.

[Mark Lanier]

It was a good moment. He said, well, I don't like to say that we did that. I said, yeah, I don't like to say you did it because it's not nice to say, but it's what you did. Let's look at the document trail. And that's when I started putting the documents down. And he can't deny the documents.

[Newt Gingrich]

When you talk about all the documents you got, which is amazing, is that just a natural right of discovery once you have filed a suit or under what circumstance can you get that level of intrusiveness into a corporation's documents?

[Joseph Van Zant]

So there's really two things on that front. The first is the whistleblowers like Francis Haugen, who brought documents before we ever would have seen them. And it helped us form our complaints and our allegations to file these cases. But then once we did file the cases, it was the natural discovery process of us requesting documents. These companies had to produce millions and millions of documents and pages of documents. And we worked together with the federal partnership of the litigation in the mdl, and we have teams of dozens of attorneys on our side that have to review all of these documents. It's just an extensive amount of information that's from TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube. So you can imagine the number of documents that come from that. It's just a natural part of the discovery process. Then once we get the documents, we get to start taking depositions. And we took hundreds of depositions of sworn testimony from current employees, former employees, whistleblowers, and we get to really give life to these documents and hear the story around them, and really all that work gets condensed and consolidated, and then that's what somebody like Mark gets to present at trial and use, really some of the best of the best documents. But it was years of work and hundreds of people that went into parsing through these documents and fighting some of the biggest companies in the world, some of the biggest law firms in the world to really get to the truth.

[Mark Lanier]

This is why it takes millions and millions and millions of dollars to pursue these companies and these actions. And it does well over tens of millions of dollars to pursue them. But the nice thing for me, as the trial lawyer is Joseph and his teams have filtered through truly millions of pages of documents to where I'm able to say, okay, give me the top 200 documents on Meta, the top 200 documents on YouTube, the top 200 on Snapchat, 200 on TikTok. So I only had to look at 800.

[Newt Gingrich]

I assume because he is a smart guy, that he had been prepped coming in.

[Mark Lanier]

Oh, yeah, he had well over a thousand hours of media training before this. That's gone back years and years and years. It wasn't simply for this case. And I harangued him a little bit on that, too. I mean, his media training documents said that he needs to learn to be empathetic and he needs to learn to be human and those types of things. And, I mean, it leaves open the question, how much media training do you need to tell the truth? I mean, do you need media training to tell your wife at night that you love her? Do you need media training to tell your kids, have a good day at school? Let me help you with your homework. I mean, the simple truths of life. Don't need media Training Mark, I'll tell

[Newt Gingrich]

you one thing, I would never want to be opposite you.

[Mark Lanier]

Oh, Speaker, I would always choose your side.

[Newt Gingrich]

I have some good friends who are great trial lawyers and you would certainly fit in that circle. The rhythm, the practicality, the down home. And we're just talking a little bit about how you addicted people. The last 10 minutes are a master class that they ought to show in law school.

[Mark Lanier]

Thank you.

[Joseph Van Zant]

Well, Speaker, I'll say this. Some of Mark's cross examinations at trial were just so brutal for the defendants that I know it impacted witnesses they decided not to bring down the road because Mark was going to get to cross examine them and it was not good for them. So it had a huge impact on the trial.

[Newt Gingrich]

The greatest brutality in that setting is calm, friendly, common sense and unanswerable. You got a lawyer of that caliber? Randy Evans is a great friend of mine and is a great litigator. And he's tried to train me for 40 years and failed. But you get somebody like you, it's just devastating. Now, how did you two hook up?

[Joseph Van Zant]

I'm co lead of the state court litigation, which we would call the jccp. So I was appointed by the court there to help lead that litigation of thousands of plaintiffs, about 20 law firms. And I'm actually co leading with Mark's daughter, one of his daughters, Rachel Lanier. And so Rachel and I worked together to lead that litigation. And then Rachel obviously played an instrumental role in asking Mark to come in and try this first case for us. And so I've been a long time fan and admirer of Mark. I've been to his trial academy multiple times throughout the years and have always looked up to him. And so this was an incredible opportunity for me to actually get to see him and work with him trying a case. It was amazing.

[Newt Gingrich]

You had the right leverage to get him involved.

[Joseph Van Zant]

That's right. We had just what we needed to get him involved. Yeah.

[Mark Lanier]

I'll give you a backstory that I don't tell many people, Mr. Speaker, but this gives you something that others don't know. I'm not even sure, Joseph, if you know this, my daughter Rachel calls me and she said, dad, I need your advice. And I said, well, what's up? She said, you know, I'm one of the co leads in this social media. I said, yeah. She said, there's kind of a fight going on about who's going to try the first case, and some set of lawyers want to try it, another set of lawyers want to try it, and neither side's budging. And they're both asking me, where do I weigh in? You know, who am I going to throw my weight behind? I said, yeah. And she said, dad, I like all of them. I'm Switzerland. I want to be neutral here, and what should I do? And I said, well, honey, just pray about it and you'll figure out what to do. I have all the confidence in the world in you and the power of prayer. And she said, okay. So about a week later, she called me back and she said, dad, greatest advice you've ever given me. I prayed about it. It's all figured out. And I said, that's great. Who's going to try it? And she said, you are. And I said, what? And I said, rachel, I don't want to try this case. And she said, well, pray about it, dad, because that's what you're supposed to do. So that's how I got involved.

[Newt Gingrich]

But let me take you back to the structure of this case, because, you know, I watch things like the Lincoln Lawyer. I watched various TV shows about lawyers. I go all the way back to Perry Mason. The judge played, if I understand you, a really important role in trying to shape an environment in which you could sort out whether or not there was really a case. I'm trying to understand here's a case where you come in with a thousand possibilities or zero, and the judge could have thrown the whole thing out. And the judge is trying to figure out as a landmark against which we may well have years of activity, how do you get to the right structure? And it puts enormous power on the judge.

[Mark Lanier]

Doesn't puts enormous power and enormous responsibility. And Joseph will have a longer viewpoint of it. But I'll tell you this from my perspective. I've tried cases for 42 years. I've tried them all across America, from New York to California, from Florida to Ohio to Texas, Oklahoma, and all points in between. This judge is a gold medal judge. She's as good as they come. She's a Duke Law grad. One of my lawyers before he passed away was someone you know quite well, and he had spoken of this judge to me. I've been on panels with her. Ken Starr, by the way, is the lawyer that worked for me that you know, and Ken was at our firm until he passed away. But she is a gold medal judge and she navigated it. And it's hard because these companies can hire the most connected, best lawyers money can buy. And Joseph and his legal teams, I think they're probably 15 plus firms that he was coordinating as one of the co leads. And I mean, we had 40 people there working the case on our side in addition to the other side. And the judge is corralling all of it. And she had a gaggle of media which she has to control. She has parents who are upset and outside throwing out protests. And she navigated it with grace and strict control. She was a good schoolmaster and a brilliant lady. And my hat's off to her. I'd try any case I've got in front of her.

[Newt Gingrich]

How did she get picked?

[Joseph Van Zant]

So that's a process when they're creating the jccp, which is like a California version of a multi district litigation. So whenever there's hundreds or thousands of of cases against the same companies, the California judicial system will say, all right, let's combine these in front of one judge so it's more efficient. And so there's a hearing judge that gets assigned. And that was Judge Cunningham in Los Angeles Superior Court to where we went and argued for the creation of this consolidated litigation. And he ruled that it should be consolidated. And then as the coordinating judge, he gets to choose who the judge is. And that could have been a judge anywhere in the state of California, but he chose Judge Kuehl there in Los Angeles Superior Court. And immediately we heard great things about Judge Kuhl, how good of a judge she is. And what Mark said about the trial has been true throughout the entire litigation. She is such a thoughtful, thorough jurist. There's a lot of motions, a lot of paper, hundreds and thousands of pages that we filed on really, really critical, challenging legal issues. And every time she comes to court, it's clear she's read every single word of it. And she is sharp and she knows the case law and you've got to be on top of your game in front of her. And so it has been incredible to get to work in front of her on this case.

[Newt Gingrich]

Well, when we come back, I want to discuss with you the whole notion of addictiveness and how that built into ultimately making the case possible.

[Sponsor Announcer]

Support for the show comes from Public, the investing platform for those who take it seriously. On Public, you can build a multi asset portfolio of stocks, bonds, options, crypto and now generated assets which allow you to turn any idea into an investable index. With AI, it all starts with your prompt. From renewable energy companies with high free cash flow to semiconductor suppliers growing revenue over 20% year over year, you can literally type any prompt and put the AI to work. It screens thousands of stocks, builds a one of a kind index and lets you back, test it against the S&P 500. Then you can invest in a few clicks. Generated assets are like ETFs with infinite possibilities, completely customizable and based on your thesis, not someone else's. Go to public.com podcast and earn an uncapped 1% bonus when you transfer your portfolio. That's public.com podcast paid for by Public Investing Brokerage Services by Open to the Public Investing Inc. Member FINRA and SIPC Advisory Services by Public Advisors llc, SEC Registered Advisor. Generated Assets is an interactive analysis tool. Output is for informational purposes only and is not an investment recommendation or advice. Complete Disclosures available at public.comDisclosures Time for

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[Mark Lanier]

All for free.

[Sponsor Announcer]

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[Newt Gingrich]

You have a legal strategy standpoint? Certainly, Ed. I think for most of us who are not lawyers, this has been a fascinating conversation so far. But I want to get to, in a sense, kind of the substance of this case, which is, what do we mean by addiction? And to what degree do people who, particularly if they're children, end up being addicted? Is there a responsibility on the part of the addictor for having set that up? And I guess this is really you, Joseph, because at the very opening of this beginning to emerge as a case, how did you respond to this whole notion that these were literally people being addicted and they're being addicted electronically in a weirdly anonymous way that involves algorithms?

[Joseph Van Zant]

So let me touch on it just kind of from where we started. And I really want to hear Mark talk about this in terms of the trial perspective and the evidence we put on. But the litigation I did just prior to this was the Juul e Cigarette litigation. And it was very similar. We were talking addiction. It was addiction. But nicotine, a substance which is not as hard to convince people of. But we were talking about addicted teens. And then when all the evidence started coming out about social media, we saw that there really wasn't much different. And so we did have a lot of skepticism when this thing started. People were like, what are you suing over social media addiction? Is that even a thing? Is it real? Does it actually cause harm? And the more and more internal documents we got from these companies, we saw very clearly that these companies knew it was causing harm and that it was a real condition. And then we start to see the scientific literature develop over time. The medical community is now recognizing and seeing that this is a real problem that causes permanent changes to the adolescent brain. It is addiction just as much as any addiction to a substance. It operates on the brain very similar ways. And I'll let Mark touch on some of the evidence we put in at trial on that, which really convinced the jury.

[Mark Lanier]

We brought in the head of the psychiatric addiction unit at Stanford University, Anna Lemke. And she's brilliant. She's well published. She published Dopamine Nation, a New York Times bestseller, translated into 35 languages. She treats addiction. She teaches the doctors how to treat addiction. She's just the best of the best, number one in, I think, the world on this stuff. And she came in and said, when you're dealing with addiction, there are Certain criteria that makes someone clinically addicted, including the inability to stop, even when it negatively affects your life and negatively affects your relationships. And you're aware that it is, but you still can't stop. So there are criteria that you have to meet to be termed addicted. And the American Psychiatric association recognizes that. And what these companies did is they tried to figure out how to use features that would make this addictive, especially to a developing teen mind. And one of the things they relied on and put into their documents is we'll use casino science. Because we have learned that people can get addicted to slot machines. And the reason slot machines are addictive is because you have a repetitive motion. You pull the handle, you have the bells and whistles that show. And while you don't get a jackpot, except maybe every second or third day, you get intermittent variable rewards where it'll spill out a handful of quarters or a half a handful of quarters or a handful and a half a quarters. And they said, we need to use that science to make ours addictive. So they made it where you take your cell phone and you can just sort of swipe and swipe and swipe. It's the repetitive motion, like a slot machine. So the kids have this repetitive motion with an infinite scroll. We figured out that you could scroll, just the videos on tap now, for something like 230,000 years without going through all of them. And so they've got a repetitive scroll. And then they send the algorithm. The algorithm is tenacious. It's like you walk into a bookstore speaker and you say, hey, I'm going to pick up this book on Newt Gingrich's Contract with America. And so you pick up the book and you start looking at it, and then every other book on the table magically transforms into something akin to Newt Gingrich's Contract With America. And then you pick up another one that has something to do with, and everything transforms again. It will feed you exactly what you want to see. But then about every tenth time, it'll throw in a curveball just to see if it whets your appetite. And they've used AI engines to figure out what might whet your appetite. And that's why if you're looking at gymnastics because you're a 12 year old gymnast who wants to become an Olympian, about every 10 they'll put in something that's got some child perversion in it because they're thinking that this may be a dirty old man who's looking at pubescent girls in leotards or Something. And so the AI engine, the AI has no morality. There's no morality at all in this. And it's all designed to keep you on there as long as humanly possible. And that's not even talking about the fact that they'll send kids notifications in the middle of the night that'll bing their phone so that they pick it up to see what the latest is on the notification or what the likes are or what the dislikes are, or they have all of these features they put in there solely for the purpose of addiction.

[Newt Gingrich]

You know, some people believe that parents have to live up to their responsibility and parents have to monitor what their kids are seeing and doing. To what extent do you think that's true? And to what extent in the modern world does that become almost unenforceable?

[Mark Lanier]

A, parents do have responsibility, there's no question. B, there's not a parent in this world that I know of, absent those who work at these big tech companies, perhaps who stands a snowball's chance against the algorithms and the power of these trillion dollar companies. And those parents who, for example, might send in an email or a text that says, hey, I put controls on their phones, don't even remotely think that that changes anything. You can get on YouTube main without even having to list your age. And once you're on it, you can have access to all sorts of sorted materials and you can fall prey to the addictive design. They don't even ask your age to get on YouTube main. Parental controls are totally inadequate. The companies know that Meta did a study on parental controls. They had the University of Chicago conduct the study. The study came back and said that parents are not equipped to be able to handle the addictive features and all of the tricky ways we've got of getting children into a problematic use of the app. And the reaction of Meadow when that study came out that Meta had funded was Timeout. Make sure this study doesn't go public. We don't want anyone to know these results. I'm telling you, as a practical matter, parents don't stand a chance on their own. And if they think they do, they're gravely mistaken. Now compound this with the fact that poor Kaylee, our girl, got on this app when she was six years old. That's 2011, 2012. Parents back then didn't know what we know now. 60 Minutes hadn't done their expose. Jonathan Haidt hadn't written his books. The world's a different place now and we're dealing with a lost generation. We're dealing with a generation that was abused. And I go back to the idea that, yeah, they may have had parents that weren't perfect, but those are the very ones the documents said were more likely to get addicted and the ones that were targeted by these companies.

[Joseph Van Zant]

And I'll add one thing to that, and it goes to One of our claims that we won against both YouTube and meta in this case is failure to warn. That's a big part of this. These companies knew longer than anyone else the dangers of their products. They didn't tell anybody. They didn't tell parents. And that was part of their legal duty was to warn kids, but also to warn parents of the harm. And so to sit here and say parents should have known this, should have known that when the companies themselves have now been found legally liable for failing to warn parents, that's really what it's about. That was another big part. Not only were they negligent and reckless, they knew about harms that they didn't tell anyone about. And again, that makes it very hard for parents to do their job when companies know of harms and fail to warn about them.

[Newt Gingrich]

When we come back, I want to talk about how this case could change the legal landscape, both in terms of general law, but also in terms of these big companies.

[Sponsor Announcer]

Support for the show comes from Public the investing platform for those who take it seriously. On public you can build a multi asset portfolio of stocks, bonds, options, crypto and now generated assets which allow you to turn any idea into an investable index with AI. It all starts with your prompt. From renewable energy companies with high free cash flow to semiconductor suppliers growing revenue over 20% year over year, you can literally type any prompt and put the AI to work. Work it screens thousands of stocks, builds a one of a kind index and lets you back test it against the S P500. Then you can invest in a few clicks. Generated assets are like ETFs with infinite possibilities, completely customizable and based on your thesis, not someone else's. Go to public.com podcast and earn an uncapped 1% bonus when you transfer your portfolio. That's public.com podcast paid for by Public Investing Brokerage Services by Open to the Public Investing Inc. Member FINRA and SIPC at the Advisory Services by Public Advisors llc SEC Registered Advisor Generated Assets is an interactive analysis tool. Output is for informational purposes only and is not an investment recommendation or advice. Complete disclosure is available at public.com disclosures

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[Mark Lanier]

All for free.

[Sponsor Announcer]

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[Joseph Van Zant]

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[Newt Gingrich]

As I was listening to you this morning now Mark, one of the places you would probably look for this pattern of algorithmic addiction would be TikTok.

[Mark Lanier]

Yes, TikTok's a bad entity. In fact, they settled with us on the courthouse steps. We needed to settle out two defendants because the judge gave us a time limit on how long we could try the case. And I had computed it and I didn't think I could try it against four defendants in that time. I had a good shot at trying it against two. So Snapchat and TikTok settled out. TikTok is very destructive. It is one of the worst of the worst. TikTok is different here than it is in foreign countries. TikTok in China serves spinach. TikTok in America serves opioids. They have different ways that they work and it is a tough platform. And if we had you as speaker again, if you came out with a new contract for a new America, I guarantee you you would have repealing section 230 and stopping these big platforms from self regulation. And look, I'm a Republican, I'm a deregulate guy. But these companies need some measure of regulation because the court system is the last resort, not the best resort.

[Newt Gingrich]

I'm listening to you, and I'm realizing that we actually need a whole series of hearings on the addictive process and on corporations which methodically use systems of addiction. And frankly, not just in terms of young people, but also look at online betting. I mean, online betting is, I think, becoming a nightmare and a diversion of resources, often from the people who are least able to do it.

[Mark Lanier]

Yeah. You remember General John Ashcroft. I'm sure you know him well. I told him that I was going to be on your podcast, and he said I had to tell you hello, and he hopes you're doing well. But I had him speaking at a function for me at a university where I serve on the board in Nashville, and he launched into this online betting, and he correctly said that it's basically attacks on the mathematically impaired. He said, you've got people who are not able to put food on the table, who are online betting, buying lottery tickets, doing all of these other things. And he went on a rampage about it. So he'd sign up with you and me on that one.

[Newt Gingrich]

Do you sort of have a sense, for example, Senator Marsha Blackburn now has a Kids Online Safety act, which really goes after the social media platforms to protect people under 17. Do you think we need dramatically greater transparency about how they are designing these things?

[Joseph Van Zant]

We're very appreciative of Senator Blackburn and the efforts she's made on this front. But the lobbying efforts of these companies in D.C. is a battle that we're also facing. In the middle of this trial, there were efforts to put language in that bill and other bills that would essentially preempted further lawsuits against these companies. And so we're not fighting these companies just in the courtroom. They're constantly trying to get further protection from being held accountable. That's really what's at stake here, is being able to hold these companies accountable. Our trial was the first one that showed that it's possible. It's possible to hold them accountable. And instead of continuing to fight it out the courts, they're now trying to go a roundabout way and prevent us legally, through legislation, from being able to hold them accountable. So that's something that we're fighting as well.

[Mark Lanier]

Yeah, I'm thankful for Senator Blackburn and I'm thankful for Senator Josh Hawley out of Missouri. I'll give him a shout out because he's really, really been pushing this. I was delighted to get a text from him. The morning that I was going to cross examine Zuckerberg, he texted me and said, go get him. He understands this and it's actually across the aisle. Dick Durbin understands this as well. This is one where I've taken great appreciation, respect for so many of my Republican friends who are ready to wage this fight. I was texting with John Cornyn, who's my senator, just the other day, about it. They know something's got to be done and that we're battling the most valuable corporations in the history of the world. These are the biggest, they've got the brightest minds, they've got more direct involvement. One out of every four people on the planet get on a meta platform on almost a daily basis. One out of four on the planet. They can put disinformation out, they can affect elections, they can do all sorts of things. And we need better transparency and some type of control.

[Joseph Van Zant]

I'll add to that from here in Alabama, Senator Katie Britt and Tommy Tuberville have also been advocates for this issue as well that have really helped ensure that the bills that are being discussed are aimed towards transparency and not further protections for these companies. And so it's been incredible to see the work on both sides of the political aisle, people coming together, wanting to ensure that these platforms are safer for children.

[Newt Gingrich]

Now, the Australian response has been to just say you can't use it if you're under 16, and if the companies don't cut you off, the companies face really big penalties. Is part of this defining some way to minimize exposure, or is that so un American?

[Mark Lanier]

I think it's pretty un American. And the problem is there are some good things that can be done with social media. It's not the devil incarnate. It's got its pluses. It's just like so many other things. I mean, understanding the nuclear effects of an atom can give us wonderful technologies of mri, but it can also give us dirty bombs. And so it's one of these technologies that needs to be used. Right? And used well, I'm not one of these just ban it guys. That does seem kind of un American. But the problem we got is with no regulation. So you take for example, when I had on the stand Mark Zuckerberg, he said, well, we don't allow children under 13 on Instagram. Well, we've got the documents where they not only allow it, but they're trying to get them meta's, the one with the document that said if we get them as tweens, which is below 13, if we get them as tweens will keep them as teens. That was their slogan. And so they were targeting, they were going after young children. And at some point you've just got to say, time out, don't say one thing to the public and to the jury and do something different. Let's really do this right. Let's have transparency, put age gating into place where you can figure out what's appropriate and inappropriate at different ages and let's help people who are vulnerable not prey on them.

[Newt Gingrich]

I'm very curious, since you both have seen so much material and so much evidence of deliberate addiction building, how does it change your look at your own kids or your own grandkids and how you think about their interaction with this modern electronic world?

[Joseph Van Zant]

I have a nine year old and a five year old, so this is more of a forward looking issue for me. They don't have phones now. And now, given what I know, it will be a long time before they do. There are companies that are now filling this gap, creating phones, kind of old school phones that aren't smartphones. Right. So you can get your kid a phone when they're 15 or 16, but they don't have access to the Internet or social media. So that's a very encouraging thing to see. But I mean, that's a big part of why I'm doing this. It's not only to help the kids who've been impacted in the past, but really make sure this doesn't happen to a new generation of kids. And part of what I'm doing right now, and I'm sure Mark is as well, but I'm going around and speaking to different organizations, youth organizations associated with my church, and really making sure people and parents know about these harms and are taking precautions. I had my son ask me last week, when will I get a phone? I was like, you're going to be, I don't know, 16, 17 years old before that. I mean, it's something that opened my eyes as to the real dangers that are out there.

[Mark Lanier]

And one of the things that I would add is we're fortunate to have really good kids, which are great parents to our grandkids and we've got good relationships with those grandkids. And so it's enabled us to sit down and talk to them and to lay these things out. And they've reacted very well. Even those that are already on social media have said, wow, I really need to check this, I need to talk to my friends about it. We need to be different and be careful. Our nine year Old granddaughter. Her comment was, I don't think I'm going to get on social media until I'm in my 90s. I'm sure that'll change, but I think talking to them as well. But parents don't stand a chance against the algorithms. I'll tell you this, you got to watch out because what happens is their friends get on it, then everybody's on it except your kid or your grandkid. And then they feel like they're the outsider. And the fear of missing out is such a huge factor in teen development. They want to be part of the club and part of the clique and part of the group. It is a serious issue. They'll go to slumber parties where everybody will be on their phones and they'll be, look at this, look at this, look at this. You don't really have full control as a parent, so you've got to attack this on all fronts. The companies need to be responsible, but you as a parent, grandparent need to be responsible as well.

[Joseph Van Zant]

And there are parental organizations out there doing great things right now. Just at our school where our kids go here in Alabama, a group of moms joined this national organization called wait until 8th. And it's everyone in elementary, middle school, like pledges not to get your kid a smartphone until after the eighth grade until essentially they're in high school. And so it's becoming more and more socially acceptable to put that off. And I think that's such a good thing that's being developed, I'd say from this litigation and just, just the increased public knowledge of the harms that can be caused by social media.

[Newt Gingrich]

This has certainly been one of the most interesting podcasts I've been involved in. The two of you are amazing. The story you have is amazing and of course what you're in the middle of is amazing. So I'm really grateful to both of you for joining us and I really appreciate the amount of time you've been willing to give us to talk about this.

[Mark Lanier]

Thank you for raising awareness. And Joseph, I still go back to thank you for letting me try your case.

[Joseph Van Zant]

No, thank you for doing it. And you can come try all the other ones as well if you like. Thank you, Speaker. It's a great honor to meet you and to be on your podcast and appreciate again you raising the awareness as well on this issue.

[Sponsor Announcer]

Support for the show comes from Public, the investing platform for those who take it seriously. On public. You can build a multi asset portfolio of stocks, bonds, options, crypto and now generated assets which allow you to turn any idea into an investable index with AI. It all starts with your prompt. From renewable energy companies with high free cash flow to semiconductor suppliers growing revenue over 20% year over year, you can literally type any prompt and put the AI to work. It screens thousands of stocks, builds a one of a kind index and lets you back test it against the S&P 500. Then you can invest in a few clicks. Generated assets are like ETFs with infinite possibilities, completely customizable and based on your thesis, not someone else's. Go to public.com podcast and earn an uncapped 1% bonus when you transfer your portfolio. That's public.com podcast paid for by Public Investing Brokerage Services by Open to the Public Investing Inc. Member FINRA and SIPC Advisory Services by Public Advisors, llc. SEC Registered Advisor. Generated Assets is an interactive analysis tool. Output is for informational purposes only and is not an investment recommendation or advice. Complete disclosures available at public.com disclosures tired

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Deciding on what to listen to is hard. Using Xumo to stream music from iheart 90s radio is easy or play iheart country classics radio or hip Hop Beats your choice.

[Mark Lanier]

All for free.

[Sponsor Announcer]

Stream Easy with Zumo Play. Get live and on demand entertainment with no logins, no signups, no accounts, no hassle. Get cozy on the couch and binge your favorite movies like the Cable Guy starring Jim Carrey, the Bounty Hunter starring Jennifer Aniston and more. All streaming free on Zoom. Zumo Play Go to play.zumo.com now life is hard.

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[Newt Gingrich]

And now I'm pleased to introduce a new segment to Newts World where I answer listeners questions. To ask a question please email me at newtingrich360 Ann asked Mr. Speaker why would the House and Senate go on recess for two weeks without funding the Department of Homeland Security? Also, will President Trump's Executive order to pay TSA agents allow them to be paid until the Congress gets its act together? Great questions Anne. Frankly, I would not have allowed the Congress to go home and I have publicly encouraged the President to to bring the House and Senate back and force them to stay in session until they solve this. This is ridiculous. For celebrating the 250th anniversary of the founding of America. This is not how the founding Fathers did things. And in fact when they wrote the Constitution they went to Philadelphia, locked themselves in a room with no press for 55 days and negotiated until they got it done. That's the right way to do it. I think the President's executive order will pay TSA agents. Probably somebody will eventually sue arguing he doesn't have that authority. But they'll get paid while the lawsuit's going on. And hopefully by then the House and Senate will have their act together. And as part of that I am sure they'll put in a paragraph that retroactively approves the spending on tsa. I can't imagine even the Democrats being dumb enough to sue to block the President from paying tsa. So I look forward to hearing from you. To ask a question, please email me at newtingers360.com thank you to my guests Joseph Van Zant and Mark Lanier. Newt's World is produced by Gingrich360 and iHeartMedia. Our executive producer is Garnesey Sloan. Our researcher is Rachel Peterson. Special thanks to the team at Gingrich360. If you've been enjoying neutral, I hope you'll go to Apple Podcast and both rate us with five stars and give us a review so others can learn what it's all about. Join me on [e-mail] I'm Newt Gingrich. This is Newtsworld.

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