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- [00:02]
Nikki Petrossi
Back to court today to continue trying to tolerate the witness testimony from Christus Goodrow of YouTube. And then we will be hearing again from a Data science expert, Dr. John Chandler, that we started last week. Wow, wow, wow. Guys, I have a couple things to say after today in court, one being the quote from YouTube VP of Engineering Christos Good Row who said, get ready for this. We don't want people to be addicted to YouTube any more than we want them to be addicted to good books or learning things or enjoy music. Goodrow talked about how his daughter would read too much and he was always concerned that she was losing sleep. Kaylee's therapist's name is Victoria Burke and I freaking love her. She sat there and really got bullied by Meta and she did not back
- [00:48]
Christine Ahmadijan
down when Kaylee was speaking about how her perception of self is completely shaped by her use of these apps. I see myself and Kaylee a lot.
- [01:02]
Nikki Petrossi
This is the Heat is Big Tech on Trial, a scrolling to death series in partnership with Heat Initiative. Thousands of families in school districts and dozens of US states have brought consolidated lawsuits against TikTok, YouTube, Meta, and Snap, alleging that their platforms were deliberately designed to addict and harm children.
- [01:22]
Sarah Gardner
Some are calling this the tobacco trials of our generation. The first case to be tried is about Cayley. Four of the most powerful companies in the world against a child like yours and mine. Did social media use play a role in Kaylee's anxiety, depression and suicidal thoughts? Or was it genetic, a result of her environment?
- [01:42]
Nikki Petrossi
The attorneys will battle it out and the jury will have to decide. We're inside the courtroom watching this go down, translating all of this into something that matters for parents everywhere. Because this trial and the ones following have implications for all of us. I'm Nikki Petrossi.
- [01:58]
Sarah Gardner
And I'm Sarah Gardner.
- [02:00]
Nikki Petrossi
This is the Heat Is On Big Tech on Trial Week five recap.
- [02:07]
Sarah Gardner
This week we are joined by two amazing guests, Meta Whistleblower and a witness who appeared in the trial last week, Brian Boland.
- [02:14]
Nikki Petrossi
And we have our friend and colleague Christine Ahmadijan, who has been working with us closely on trial coverage. Christine has spent many hours in that courtroom and is here to give us her perspective on Kaylee's testimony. We had a full week in the courtroom, all five days. It was a huge week. We had a lot of witnesses come in and these were all called by the plaintiff attorney, Kaylee's attorney, Mark Lanier. So we had a YouTube executive, a data science expert, Kaylee's therapist, and Kayleigh herself. So we're going to go through all the details of what happened when each of those people were put on the stand on Monday. And continuing into Tuesday afternoon, we had Christos Goodrow, who has been with, with Google for 18 years. Google owns YouTube for those of you who don't know. And 15 of those years were at YouTube specifically. He is currently the VP of Engineering and he says he is responsible for the entire algorithm. He, he actually like loved to take credit for the algorithm. He said it a few times. There's going to be some arrogance dripping through this. He made me so upset, to be honest, watching him in the courtroom. And so that's. You're gonna hear that as I go through his testimony.
- [03:28]
Sarah Gardner
I felt like you've been more upset about this testimony than Mark's testimony, so. And I really wanna understand why. So I'm excited to hear from you. What really rubbed you the wrong way.
- [03:39]
Nikki Petrossi
Yeah, it was just an arrogance. And he was laughing a lot like it was crazy. Laughing as he answered, as he started each answer with sort of a vibe like, this is ridiculous that I have to answer this and be here and just disrespectful. Like you've been called here and this is very serious. This is a very serious situation that you're in. It's not ridiculous. And stop laughing.
- [04:03]
Sarah Gardner
So you saw him walk in the courtroom?
- [04:05]
Nikki Petrossi
So I saw him walk in and he comes in with this guy that I had recognized and, and he's this tall gentleman and it is a guy that had been in the courtroom during jury selection and that was a crazy time when it was first come, first serve and you had to wait in line from early hours in the morning, sometimes overnight to get a spot. And this is the guy that had potentially paid someone, but hired someone to line hold and sit in line overnight. And then he walks up at like 7 in the morning and just snags the spot. When you have parent survivors who are part of this case who have been sleeping out there since 11 the night before. And so not cool guy. I don't know his name, but not cool.
- [04:48]
Sarah Gardner
Do you think he was getting in there to like prep Chris for this?
- [04:52]
Nikki Petrossi
Yeah, I mean, I, we had found out that he was in the, on the communications team. And now that I saw him come in with Christos good row, I was like, okay, he's. He was there to kind of observe and help Christos prepare, which didn't seem to work because Christos did not seem very prepared. So some highlights from Christos good row. Some things we found out and things that stood out to me. He makes seven to $10 million a year from YouTub, largely in stock. And the reason that Mark Lanier. This is important for Mark Lanier to point out is that a vast majority of what they make is tied to the stock price and the performance of the company. Right. So they're incentivized hugely in a financial way to make sure that they're profitable. Christos testified that his kids watch five to six hours of YouTube per day and that they are monitored the entire time. And this was an insane thing to hear somebody utter under oath.
- [05:52]
Sarah Gardner
Wait, what? How old are his kids?
- [05:55]
Nikki Petrossi
I tried to find that out because he is a bit older. So I'm like, maybe they're adults. Maybe he was referencing when they were younger. I could not find out how old his kids are. But he was saying it like that was an okay thing to do. And he talked about how he would watch much more TV than that when he was young. And he would much prefer. Yeah. And he would prefer his kids watch YouTube and that it's been really good for them. And then later on, talking about how he's not aware of kids watching YouTube without their parents, to which Mark Lanier was like, wait, your kids watch five to six hours? So are you telling me that you're monitoring them the entire time? And he says, yes.
- [06:38]
Sarah Gardner
What, like you're under O, Isn't it? Isn't he at his job?
- [06:42]
Nikki Petrossi
I know.
- [06:44]
Sarah Gardner
Meeting all the engineers, building the algorithm.
- [06:46]
Nikki Petrossi
Right.
- [06:47]
Sarah Gardner
Doesn't make any sense.
- [06:48]
Nikki Petrossi
It doesn't make any sense. And Mark Lanier was like, do you go to the bathroom? Like, are you monitoring the entire time?
- [06:55]
Sarah Gardner
Oh, interesting.
- [06:56]
Nikki Petrossi
And that was a part where he laughed. And that was an appropriate time to laugh. The only appropriate time.
- [07:00]
Sarah Gardner
The only appropriate time.
- [07:01]
Christine Ahmadijan
Yeah.
- [07:02]
Sarah Gardner
Well, also, that's. Well, one, that's really depressing if that's true.
- [07:06]
Nikki Petrossi
Yeah.
- [07:07]
Sarah Gardner
And two, this doesn't surprise me, though, about, like, the mentality that the people building it think it's safe and would give their kids access. You know, we've often heard the opposite of the CEO level. It's interesting to get down into a different level of employee and hear what they do, because. And it just goes to show you that people are at all parts of the spectrum right now of what is too much tech exposure or not. But I'm five to six hours of YouTube. I mean, really does sound like in that problematic use category for a child. Right.
- [07:48]
Nikki Petrossi
I mean, that's just hugely. Anyone? It's. It's wild. And it kind of proves the point of the habitual use or the addictiveness of it. Like why are they getting to that much time? So during Christos Good Row's testimony, the jury, jury was shown a lot of internal documents and one in particular is from 2018. It's a literature review which clearly links excessive digital video watching to addiction is on the slide. Sleep disruption, cognitive impairment. And the slides suggested, like YouTube was designed to encourage compulsive use. It showed them adding features like Autoplay, which they knew would increase watch time and habitual use and the late night viewing. Another internal document was a presentation titled Principles of habit Building and outlines the negative effects of YouTube like sleep quality, duration and depression and anxiety and body esteem issues and isolation. And Goodrow would see these documents and he would acknowledge them, like admit that that's what it says on the slide, but he would just disagree with what was on the slide. Like he'd say, I see that slide, but it's wrong.
- [08:59]
Sarah Gardner
What, what does that mean? Shouldn't he know? Isn't he in charge of these slides?
- [09:04]
Nikki Petrossi
Well, they weren't all his slides. They were just other internal slides that had come across his desk at some point. Likely. But even if they hadn't, like, sir, you're not a mental health professional. This was a group of people analyzing the literature that exists about the effects of digital video watching. And you're, you somehow can say that, that they're wrong.
- [09:23]
Sarah Gardner
Like, right. But he offered no like alternative research source when he would say they were wrong.
- [09:30]
Nikki Petrossi
No, no, he just clearly said they were wrong. And it was really frustrating because yeah, he doesn't have any backing. Good. Row wanted to be sure during his time to outline all the safety features that they've added over the years for minors, which was, was a long list. But the point is with YouTube that kids can watch it without signing in, which means to YouTube you're treated like an adult. And this is by far how Kaylee watched YouTube in a logged out state. So none of those safety features are even relevant to her. The last internal document I'll mention Here is from YouTube where they stated that some of the heaviest users on our platform don't report any well being effects and aren't aware of how usage affects them. So the kids that are being harmed, they, a lot of them don't even know it or acknowledge it or admit it. And this was very much Kaylee. Kaylee's family didn't file against YouTube originally. YouTube was added because they didn't realize her mom didn't realize the, how extensive her use was. Suffice, it to say we were kind of all happy to see this man walk out of the courtroom. Like, a day and a half with Christos Goodro was good for me. I'm good. It was a lot. It was a lot to process, but the jury saw it, and that's what is important. Although it was frustrating to people to watch him, I don't want to say lie, but it felt like he wasn't being truthful. It was clear that he was trying to cover some things up, and I think the jury saw right through it.
- [10:54]
Sarah Gardner
Yeah, it's interesting that it was a different approach than Mark's, which I feel like Mark's was to kind of admit, say, yes, that is a real document, but since then, we've changed it versus just to sort of flat out deny.
- [11:09]
Nikki Petrossi
Yeah. Or Mark Zuckerberg would be like, oh, there's other research that contradicts. At least. He would be like, I'm not saying that research is wrong because I'm not a researcher or scientist. Like, there's other research that contradicts, which is an argument that doesn't frustrate me as much as just saying that that research is wrong. The remainder of Wednesday, we resumed with Dr. John Chandler. So Dr. Chandler had begun the week before and sort of had to come back again because Christus Goodrow was a. Was scheduled in and it needed to be solid. He's got a busy schedule. So Dr. Chandler is the data and marketing analytics expert who was brought in to help us understand how these companies really make money and to break down the math, like the literal equation that the companies use. One of those important factors being watch time, like, more time on site, more ads, more money, and kind of reiterate to people like, the companies are financially incentivized to get people to spend as much time, AKA Addict and where's that line.
- [12:11]
Sarah Gardner
We talked a lot about the stock that a lot of these employees have and how that stock is tied to performance and. Or the performance of the company. I mean, that's something that's true for, like, most of business. So that's not that unusual. And it's also not unusual to have a product that you want to get people to use more and more and more and more. So I think the distinction here is. Needs to be children versus adults and their brains versus adult, the adult brain. And addicting a more vulnerable brain that cannot discern or make the decision that something has become unhealthy. I think that that is a really key part of this, because if it's just about, oh, they Wanted you to use it more and more and more. I mean you could make that analogy for millions of different products across a whole wide range of things. So I think there has to tied to negative outcomes, to the harms of those, the harm of that use and that you had children in these environments that were exposed to this level of an addictive product without warning. Do you know what I mean?
- [13:26]
Nikki Petrossi
Yeah. And like how much of their time do they want? Apparently five to six hours, according to Christos Goodrow. Or like, or 16 hours, like Haley spent one day on Instagram. And misery is saying that's not addiction, that's potentially problematic use, but that's not a, that's not a problem for them.
- [13:46]
Sarah Gardner
Right. I think in the context of kids, like this is what should really concern parents is the fact that they don't think those amounts of time are problematic and that they, those were the goals versus their performance is tied to the use and the use, they want the use to be high. I'm just saying as someone who like, has also knows a lot about tech business, like that's not a crazy metric. That would be true for pretty much everything we interact with. So we have to show, and I feel like the plaintiff's team is doing that, the connection between the knowledge of that and then the harms and the failure to warn.
- [14:25]
Nikki Petrossi
Right.
- [14:25]
Sarah Gardner
Because that is that something that gets talked a lot about in the courtroom.
- [14:29]
Nikki Petrossi
Yeah. And that's something that's alleged in the case. And the jury's gonna have to decide guilty or not guilty on that point. And so in the internal documents saying that habitual video watching, online, digital video watching, for example, can lead to addiction and harmful health outcomes. And then, yeah, they don't. They continue to add more features to get people scrolling longer, watching longer, and then they don't warn families either. So Dr. Chandler was given access to millions of internal documents from YouTube and meta and he did his like expert analysis thing with them. And what, what the highlight is here is that he found holes in the advertising data that he was given. So he was given information related to their ad revenue for minors. And he said he found it to be unreliable, that there were significant errors and contradictions in what he was given.
- [15:20]
Sarah Gardner
What does that mean? Can you say more about that? There were errors.
- [15:24]
Nikki Petrossi
He said that there were contradictions. He had to be given things multiple rounds, like there was things missing and he had to go back and ask for more. There was holes and he just didn't find the data from the company to be reliable. He didn't Go into a lot more detail. The ad revenue that the companies were reporting were more in the millions. And he sourced this other article by a Dr. Rafool. And maybe she's not a doctor, but she's a researcher that. It's called the Refool article. And basically all these researchers did a assessment using all different tools, and they estimate the ad revenue for these companies to be between 2 and 5 billion dollars per year from minors. And Dr. Chandler was like, the actual number is more close to those numbers, not the millions that these companies are telling me. Yeah, so there was a discrepancy there. And Meta and YouTube, like, vehemently denied these. These billion numbers off of miners. But in the end, it was sort of like, whose word are we trusting here? And I think that Dr. Chandler did an incredible job laying out the math behind it and validating that that study and others that he had found, which show a ton of revenue off of our kids.
- [16:44]
Sarah Gardner
If you're still an Instagram user, do not click on the ad directly in the app. Write it down, the thing you see, and then go Google it. Find it a different way. I mean, because it'd be there probably. Maybe some of that discrepancy is just the pathways. When you actually start to learn the pipe of the ad process, it is really complex. And there are these, like, middleman brokers that are the negotiators or they place the ads on behalf of the company. So something that I've even learned is that the companies can get away with saying, well, we didn't know our ad was over here or this ad was over there. I'm talking about if you're McDonald's and you buy a bunch of ads, you actually cannot say for sure where all those ads go, because they're these sort of middle brokers. And we've looked at this when ads have, like, shown up next to child sexual abuse material and other things and said, how could you place an ad next to this? And they'll say, well, we didn't know that that was going to be placed there. So I'm just saying that process is complex. And so I can understand how there may be discrepancies. And thank God there was someone like Dr. Chandler there who could help ground the jury and what it actually meant because it's a really complicated business and you don't want people to get lost.
- [18:01]
Nikki Petrossi
There are discrepancies. I remember someone sending me some videos on YouTube of people selling prescription pills, fake prescription pills. So drug dealers, and there were ads for, like, McDonald's or Disney playing in between. And it's like, what in the hell? Why is this video even here? And you're making money off of a drug dealer's video and he's making money potentially off of his video as a creator. Right.
- [18:26]
Sarah Gardner
So they can, that's why they can honestly say that they don't know how much money they're making off of ads placed near minor content because they're not actually seeing where the ads are getting placed. However, what we could say is we want to live in a world with more transparency where the company does know all the places their ads are getting placed. And ultimately my opinion is that the purchaser of the ad is. Should know where those ads are going. And if you don't know and your ad is next to something really horrifically dangerous for a child or bad, that's your responsibility.
- [19:01]
Nikki Petrossi
I asked Brian Boland about this discrepancy, the meta whistleblower that testified last week. And so we can, we can play that here. And he spent over a decade with the company in the ad business particularly.
- [19:13]
Brian Boland
Yeah, I mean, I think like a basic math problem, you could kind of get to some pretty good guesses at what the number is. Right. If you know the total revenue, which I think is well over 100 billion a year now.
- [19:23]
Nikki Petrossi
Right.
- [19:23]
Brian Boland
And you take that and figure out roughly as a population, how many youth are on a platform, you know that they're more active than not, they may be more valuable as advertising targets in some ways and less valuable in others. You come out to a guesstimate number that would be pretty solid. It's definitely not in the millions, I'll tell you that much.
- [19:46]
Nikki Petrossi
Mark Klinier gave Dr. Chandler a nickname. He called him like Three Day Chandler because he had to come back for three days. And it's some weird kind of torture to be in that holding room. And so thank you to Dr. Chandler. It means a lot to families that you went through this for us. So now we started to get into Kaylee's specific experience. And we had one of her therapists, Victoria Burke, come to the stand. And Victoria was Kaylee's therapist for about six to seven months back in 2019, when Kaylee was 13 years old. And therapists take records, obviously, after every appointment, they write all their notes down. And we went through every single one of those. There was about 20 met his attorney, took us through every record. It took literally hours. It was so boring. But what he was doing was cherry picking lines to read to the jury and kind of have Victoria affirm what he was reading with the goal being to pin Kaylee's mental health struggles on anything but social media. They would literally be like, is social media mentioned anywhere in this record? Is social media mentioned anywhere in this record? Oh, but here there's references to bullying at school and stress from her peers, or hear your mom yelled at you or hear your sister. This happened to your sister. And it was just monotonous and boring. And the jury was losing complete interest from what I could tell. Also, Victoria did not diagnose Kaylee with social media addiction. And that is because in 2019 and even to this day, social media addiction is not diagnosable in the DSM 5. So there is no code for it. And so Victoria was saying, like, it's not that, it's not a thing, but I didn't diagnose it because I couldn't and I can't. There's a guide that therapists and mental health professionals have to follow, and it outlines all of the different disorders that are recognized and maybe covered by insurance. And there's different additions and different disorders are added over time, but it takes a long time for something to get recognized and added in there and for insurance companies to validate it. And so this is a manual that she has to follow. And so in her official reporting and diagnoses, she didn't diagnose for social media addiction because it wasn't an option, but she talked about how she has clients who present with functional impairments because of their addictive use of social media. And so she actually diagnoses them with something else. And she said, like social phobia. And guess what? Kaylee was diagnosed with social phobia and body dysmorphia and anxiety disorder. So there was that point of, I did diagnose her with something that I would do in place of social media addiction because I can't diagnose for that.
- [22:32]
Sarah Gardner
Got it. That's super important for everyone listening, especially because making the connection that it's driven by social media, even if it doesn't have that name in the title of the actual diagnosis, is I feel like really important.
- [22:45]
Nikki Petrossi
And there was a point in this cross examination. So Meta's attorney, Andrew Stanner, was questioning Victoria. And I want to say to Victoria, like, I'm so sorry because you were getting bullied. He was pointing out that during Victoria's deposition last year, she was asked certain things and that her answers had somehow changed. And he was sort of questioning her intelligence. There was some misunderstanding. She was saying there was a misunderstanding between the words that they were using during the deposition and that now her opinion. This was an opinion about did social media contribute to Kaylee's mental health? Harms her. Her answer has sort of changed. And Victoria was like, I didn't fully understand the question. I was getting hung up on this certain word. And Andrew Stanner looks at her and was like, you have your master's degree, right? Like, insinuating that she's dumb. And, like, she kind of, like, rolled her eyes a little and the jury did not like it. Like, a couple of them shook their head and, oh, it was yucky. And you don't also want to look like you're bullying a woman on the screen.
- [23:47]
Sarah Gardner
A mental health professional who helps young girls with anxiety and body dysmorphia. Yeah, I know it's a bad look.
- [23:54]
Nikki Petrossi
What was clear from seeing all of her therapy records is that she really was struggling with the same mental health issues that these companies know that their platforms can cause. Like, it matches up with their records with the internal documents and the medical records. Like, we know that these platforms caused this, and this happened to Kaylee. Like the body dysmorphia as a result of the beauty filters. And there was one point when Victoria asked Kaylee in the records. So Kaylee's 13, and Victoria asks her this question. If you could wake up tomorrow and a miracle had taken place, what would that look like to you? And Kaylee said, I would look different. I would be pretty, not chubby. And no lines. Oh, that's like lines on her face at 13 years old. Because she's already been using filters to kind of smooth her face out for years.
- [24:48]
Sarah Gardner
Yeah, it's really sad.
- [24:50]
Nikki Petrossi
Now we move into Thursday, and Kaylee takes the stand. Kaylee herself. And Kaylee is 20 years old. She lives in Northern California, and she gets up there, and Mark Lanier does his thing with his roadmap, and he draws out the roadmap of what we're going to cover during our time with Kaylee. And there's three stops. It's going to be your young life, your social media life, and your life today. So I think it's important here. I'll go through a few bullets about Kaylee's young life. And I think this is really important. And I want to say there's some hard things in here that happen to Kaylee, but these are not things that are super rare. Everyone's family has things that happen. And actually, Christine, who we mentioned, our guest, one of our guests today was in the courtroom with Kaylee, and she's gonna pop in here a couple times with her perspective because she's young and she's not much older than Kayleigh. And she has a really similar experience to Kaylee with her upbringing. So you'll hear Christine pop in here as well.
- [25:47]
Christine Ahmadijan
So I was about 9 to 11 when I started using these apps as well. And when Kaylee was speaking about how her perception of self is completely shaped by her, her use of these apps, I see myself in Kaylee a lot.
- [26:05]
Nikki Petrossi
So we learned that Kaylee loves horses. She did horseback riding lessons. She collected little horse figurines. And one time her mom rented out like a whole ranch for her birthday party. There was a lot of talk of birthday parties. Her mom threw really great birthday parties. Moving back up to when Kaylee was three, her parents got divorced. And then Kaylee mainly lives with her mom and her two other siblings. So her mom is like single, parenting three kids. Kaylee was really close with her sister Kiana, who is two years older than Kaylee. They spent a lot of time talking about how close Kaylee was with her and is with her mom and sister. And we're actually going to hear from Kaylee's mom next week. She's going to be called to the stand. But it wasn't always perfect because Kaylee and her mom, like any teen or preteen, I guess, would argue sometimes, especially once Kaylee turned nine and got access to Instagram and Kaylee. But Kaylee admitted in the courtroom that most of their arguments were over her phone, which is not surprising. I think that there's stats around once you give a phone, like the conflict between parent and child.
- [27:04]
Sarah Gardner
The battle begins.
- [27:05]
Nikki Petrossi
Yes, the battle begins. Haley reported when she was younger that her mom would sometimes hit her when she didn't do or couldn't do her math homework. And this is a tough thing. Like, this is tough. And it was tough in the courtroom. Kaylee acknowledged the incidents and said, looking back at it now, so this is Kayleigh saying this. Looking back at it now, I see that she wasn't perfect, her mom, but she was trying her best. And Kaylee said, I wouldn't say that I was abused. Now, looking back at 20, and that's just Kaylee's Kaylee's testimony this week.
- [27:43]
Christine Ahmadijan
I guess the difference between what the defense was saying with regards to that situation and what Kaylee's answers were, I think that what Kaylee was very effectively doing was providing context. That not necessarily that. That doesn't necessarily make it any better what occurred, but almost in her experience now, as she's a bit older, is look back at the situation and assess it for maybe what it was like. She really provided a lot of context and really amplified the fact that she as a younger person was dramaticizing everything that she was undergoing, speaking about. She makes this very clear in her expression of her posts on social media. She did a really wonderful job at informing everybody that, you know, this is what I was doing because I wanted attention, I was seeking attention, I wanted validation from people, I wanted to interact with people and I wanted them to almost come back to me and I was putting on a show. That's what she was really referring to.
- [28:55]
Nikki Petrossi
There is also record of domestic violence from Kaylee's dad to Kaylee's mom back way back when she was 3 or younger. And Kaylee stated that she did not witness that or learn about it until much later. But it's obviously really important for Meta and YouTube to make a big deal out of this. I mean, it is a big deal, but to really highlight this and try to point to this as a source for her, her mental health issues. And they spent a lot of time doing that.
- [29:20]
Christine Ahmadijan
What the defense was doing was just always immediately deviating from that context, either referring back to the deposition record and saying, you know, per your deposition that you did under a penalty of perjury, you said X, Y and Z.
- [29:36]
Sarah Gardner
But just to go back to what you read about the excerpt from Victoria's testimony of what Kaylee described in her session of wanting to look different and have no lines on her face, like, that's talking about the beauty filters and social media use, not these incidents of her as a child. Right. So did that, did Marc Lanier or others sort of make that distinction of focusing on the social media use and its effects versus every single thing that happens in a person's life that's complicated and tricky.
- [30:14]
Nikki Petrossi
Yes. And that's the next stop on the roadmap is the social media life. And but I'll say here, though, Kaylee's family is not alleging that they don't have any responsibility for their daughter and her health. Right. They are alleging that these companies played a substantial role in her struggles. So there's a shared responsibility. If you're a company that's going to target a product at our child and tell us it's safe, it has to be safe. And so that's the point here where a lot of people have been saying to me, well, don't. But it's the parents responsibility. They don't want to take any responsibility. That's not what is happening here. It's shared.
- [30:49]
Sarah Gardner
That's a really important point to make, that they're not alleging it was only that.
- [30:55]
Nikki Petrossi
Right.
- [30:55]
Sarah Gardner
They're just saying that they played a role that's really, like, really critical to understand.
- [31:00]
Nikki Petrossi
So Mark Lanier here kind of draws a line in the sand. Like, Kaylee had some struggles when she was young, but she didn't suffer from the conditions like body dysmorphia or social phobia or depression or addiction. Now, until she starts using social media. So second stop on the roadmap, she starts watching YouTube at 6 and signs up with her own account at 8. By the time that Kaylee was 10, she had posted about 200 videos onto YouTube. Kaylee had 10 different YouTube accounts which she would set up to like her own video videos. She would also get her mom and sister to like her videos. It was really important to her to get a certain number of subscribers and a certain number of likes. And if she didn't get whatever that she felt that number was, she would feel like she looked bad. Like she said, it would feel like I looked bad and it would make me upset.
- [31:49]
Christine Ahmadijan
She kept referring to when. When she said this, like it was not a want but a need. There was a constant need for her to return back to this platform because this is how she would convey herself. This is how people would validate her. This is how she would get attention, and this is how people perceived her. And she wanted a positive perception of herself by other people. And that's what provided her, at 10 years old, the utmost validation in her life.
- [32:17]
Nikki Petrossi
She talked about the features on YouTube, like autoplay, keeping her on longer than she wanted to be. A lot of time spent overnight on YouTube. She talked about getting notifications all the time at night when she should be sleeping. She said that would give her a rush and make her go back to YouTube. Kaylee's mom did have a rule about keeping the phone out of her room at night, but Kaylee would sneak and get it once her mom was asleep. Kaylee talked about getting bullied on YouTube and overall felt like she was addicted to YouTube because she couldn't stop using it.
- [32:48]
Sarah Gardner
Did she ever talk about strangers reaching out to her on YouTube in the comments?
- [32:53]
Nikki Petrossi
Because that would be. No, because that would be content. And we can't talk about content in this trial because it's protected by section 230. So any comments or post content can't be mentioned at all.
- [33:07]
Sarah Gardner
But comments like. Because one of YouTube's big failings early on was Allowing really strange predatory adults to reach out to children through the comments of a video like that was one of the most dangerous aspects of the platform in its early years.
- [33:23]
Nikki Petrossi
Yeah. And not. It can't, because the company is protected from liability from third party messages and comments because.
- [33:33]
Sarah Gardner
Or you could say collective product design because it's dangerous, because it's connecting weird adults with kids.
- [33:38]
Nikki Petrossi
But okay. Totally, totally. And I think that's where you come into like Snapchat doing the quick ad thing. Like that's a quick add feature. It's not content.
- [33:46]
Sarah Gardner
An adult is reaching out to a kid. But I hear you, it's tricky.
- [33:49]
Nikki Petrossi
They have a lot of times during the travel all day is someone will. A party will object because it's getting too close to that content line. And so they're walking a weird line here. And this. And the judge admits this is the first time we're trying something like this. They're sort of figuring out it out as they go.
- [34:05]
Sarah Gardner
Okay.
- [34:06]
Nikki Petrossi
So then comes Instagram at 9 years old. And Kaylee's mom didn't actually allow her to have Instagram @9. And the phone had parental controls. But because the phone was a hand me down phone and had had Instagram downloaded sometime in the past and then deleted, Kaylee was able to download it without getting any permission or going through the parental controls.
- [34:28]
Sarah Gardner
Yay, Apple. Apple failed parental controls.
- [34:32]
Nikki Petrossi
Parents should really know that, right? Like, if something has been downloaded, is that still a thing now that if an app has been downloaded at any point in that app store on a device, you can get it back?
- [34:42]
Sarah Gardner
I think they did eventually address it because it just became so obvious that the parental controls were weak in that regard. But I can go back and check. That was an insane workaround though, that.
- [34:56]
Nikki Petrossi
Yeah. Existed.
- [34:57]
Sarah Gardner
Yeah.
- [34:58]
Nikki Petrossi
So Kayleigh shared that she had about 15 different Instagram accounts again, so she could get more likes and comment on her own videos. When she got a lot of comments and likes, she felt happy, and when she didn't, she would feel insecure and ugly. Kaylee also would pay for apps that had bots that would like your photos. She said that even the fake likes, they would make her look popular. We went through several of the Instagram features like Autoplay and Likes and filters and how that affected her. With the filters, Kayleigh said she used them to change her face shape, to make her nose smaller, her eyes bigger, obviously. Then she expressed like. Then when you look in the mirror, you don't like what you see. I mean, can we get it any more clear of how These filters are bad for especially young girls. Records show that one day Kaylee was on Instagram for over 16 hours. And Mark Lanier asked Kaylee about this. And Kaylee said, I just felt like I wanted to be on it all the time and if I wasn't, I would miss out. So Kaylee's use of social media affected everything in her life. She talked about that it hurt her at school, it worsened her sleep, it affected her real life relationships changed her love of the outdoors. Like, she stopped engaging in her horseback riding stuff. Kaylee stopped engaging with her family because she was spending all her time on social media. And her mom noticed this and would take the phone away and Kaylee would scream, cry, have tantrums, and even at sometimes threatened to hurt herself when she
- [36:24]
Sarah Gardner
went into therapy at 13. Was this to address that? Like, is that why they. It's like the family knew there was a problem that early with the, with the use of the apps and the addiction.
- [36:39]
Nikki Petrossi
What Victoria talked about was that Kaylee would go to her phone as a coping mechanism. And Victoria understood that it wasn't good for her to be using that as her only coping mechanism because it gives you temporary relief from whatever you're feeling. And so Victoria was aiming to get her to do other things that would help her cope that were outside of her phone. But there wasn't a knowledge then of the fact that these, these companies were addicting you or that it was actually social media that could be causing some of these issues. Like they weren't talking about filters or autoplay, you know, or notifications. Right.
- [37:17]
Sarah Gardner
They knew something was wrong, but they couldn't necessarily explain to you why. Yeah, it was just changing her personality.
- [37:24]
Nikki Petrossi
It sounds like, oh yeah, changing her whole life. And Kaylee said without her phone, she felt like a huge part of her was missing. If she didn't have it, she would miss out. She couldn't see who was liking her stuff, and that would send her into a panic. Lanier asked Kaylee, how much of your time as a teen do you think social media consumed? And Kaylee said, every single day, almost all day long.
- [37:45]
Sarah Gardner
That's heartbreaking.
- [37:46]
Nikki Petrossi
I know. So the third stop with Kayleigh was her life today. And Kayleigh talks about still struggling from body dysmorphia. Lanier asked her, are you able to recognize that you're a marvelous young woman? Can you accept who you are? And Kaylee said, no, not really. She said that before she goes out of the house, she takes three to four hours to get ready and said that that day the second day she came to court, it took her four hours to get herself ready. She still uses filters when she posts photos. She still uses social media. Mark Lanier asked why she doesn't stop, and she said, I can't. It's too hard to be without it. And Mark Lanier said, wouldn't your life be better without social media? And Kaylee said, yes, but she just can't stop.
- [38:28]
Sarah Gardner
You know what that reminds me of is John Haidt talking about in his classrooms with the NYU students, where he'll have them raise their hand and say, how many of you wish TikTok and Instagram and Snapchat were never created? And it's like the vast majority, the recognition is there that it's not healthy or good. But this is such an acute example of what the addiction can do and how much it can disable your life.
- [38:58]
Nikki Petrossi
And that, yeah, they know that it's not good and they want. They would love for it to go away, and they would love to. For it to stop, and they can't.
- [39:07]
Sarah Gardner
Like smoking.
- [39:08]
Nikki Petrossi
Like smoking.
- [39:09]
Sarah Gardner
It's so hard to stop.
- [39:11]
Nikki Petrossi
Right then we switched to Meta's cross examination. And this is by Cynthia Jones. And this was very much a shame and blame game. Ms. Jones asked Kaylee a lot of pointed questions about her dad. The fact that he left at 3, that he would get violent with her mom when she was little, that her dad would sometimes cancel his visits with Kaylee, and that made her sad. There was discrepancy between Kaylee's answers today and some of her answers in her deposition. And this was something that both YouTube and Meta hammered on. So if Kaylee disagreed with something that she had said previously, Ms. Jones would say, let's pull up your deposition. And she would read her answer and make Kayleigh acknowledge that she had answered differently before. And after, like, six or eight times of doing this, Kaylee would be like, that might have been what I thought when I was deposed, but I disagree with that now. Kayleigh also talked about she was a teenager. I was being dramatic. Like, everything seems major. Like, I was dramaticizing. Because they were pulling not just from her therapy records, but her text messages, Kaylee's social media posts, but also her private notes in the Notes app in her phone. They were reading from those. Obviously, Meta's attorney made sure to bring up the, The. The hitting story. And Kaylee acknowledges that it's. That that was true. She says it wasn't abuse, it wasn't very many Times. But what Ms. Jones was trying to do here was obviously like we talked about before, connect these experiences to Kaylee's anxiety. Meta was also trying really hard to pin her, her anxiety and different mental health issues on any in person experience outside of her family too. So bullying by peers at school, academic challenges, comments from teachers really pulling from any single thing they could that wasn't social media related that had happened in her entire life. So now we have YouTube coming in with their cross examination and their attorney Melissa Mills took the lead and this went from Thursday into Friday.
- [41:10]
Christine Ahmadijan
What the defense is going to actively do is kind of steer away from the humanity of all of this. It was the attorney for YouTube when she was cross examining Kayleigh said something along the lines of is it true that you confided in this person about any compensation associated with this case? And when she said that, I immediately said what she's trying to do here is dehumanize Kaylee and make it seem like she is pursuing this case because there's compensation involved. And in my mind I said first of all, that's how a remedy in law works, is that you can seek compensation for a harm. And that's not necessarily a negative implication here of your why. But I thought that when they did that it was a very to me ineffective and I, and I think to the jury as well. But again just the dehumanization of this person that's underwent so much. I really thought that Mark Lanier again was able to, to ground her, ground everybody in this situation and really just display the humanity of it all and the actuality of this situation. While the defense, even though they will claim that they had some sort of etiquette, like courtroom etiquette that they had to have was doing a, you know, an effective job at trying to dehumanize this person.
- [42:37]
Nikki Petrossi
Ms. Mills pulled up data that Kaylee's daily average use of YouTube was only about one hour a day. She identified a lot of that time was listening to music and that only 1 minute and 14 seconds per day was watching the Shorts feed, which is that addictive algorithm that you can't stop scrolling. But Kaylee was like that. That's not right because I know I would go onto YouTube and end up on Shorts for hours. So what we learned earlier in the trial and again now is that Kaylee used YouTube mostly in that logged out state. So the data that YouTube is pulling is from her logged in account and that's why their data doesn't show her excessive use. Ms. Mills also tried to, to kind of catch Kaylee in lies like changing her story Changing her answers from her deposition, consistently reminding her, you know, you're under oath. You know, there's a penalty of perjury, which I'm just like, this poor girl.
- [43:28]
Sarah Gardner
Did they say that to Christos? Christos, yes.
- [43:33]
Nikki Petrossi
Marklin, you said that to Christos? Yeah. Great. Good.
- [43:35]
Sarah Gardner
I'm just glad that he was.
- [43:38]
Nikki Petrossi
Yeah, for sure.
- [43:39]
Sarah Gardner
If we're gonna remind Kaylee, let's remind everybody else.
- [43:42]
Nikki Petrossi
Right. Then Mark Lanier comes up for redirect. And when that happens, I swear, everyone perks up. It's like the courtroom wakes up because he just grabs your attention. And he had another roadmap. It was deposition, a timeline and final thoughts. He pointed out with Kaylee that her deposition was a year ago at a hotel that she'd never been to before with 30 strangers. She's mic'd up. She was so uncomfortable. She actually tried to leave at lunch, and they wouldn't let her. So it's, like, not crazy to think that she may not have given perfect answers under that type of stuff. Right.
- [44:12]
Sarah Gardner
She was under duress. Also, let's just keep in mind, how much practice and training did Mark Zuckerberg have? You, like, you think his answers would have been the same 12 months ago compared to now? I don't know. That's just upsetting.
- [44:25]
Nikki Petrossi
So all the training that he gets, maybe they would have been exactly the same because he's, like, got it down.
- [44:30]
Sarah Gardner
He's already trained. But that's what I mean is this is an unfair. There's an imbalance in how people are prepped for this, and you're competing against people who've been, like, media trained for 15 years. You know what I mean? So it's just people are allowed to get advice on how to present their story and how to describe it differently than they did right off the cuff. Right.
- [44:54]
Nikki Petrossi
So Mark took Kaylee again through some of those tough, younger childhood experiences. There was actually a video played by Meta, I believe, that Kaylee took of her mom yelling at her. Kaylee addressed that and said, most of the time, the yelling was about me not doing my chores because I would be on my phone instead. And Kaylee says, I played a huge part in it because I would yell back, and then I would post these videos of my mom, hoping to get attention from others. And it worked most of the time. And here's where she said very clearly, almost every single argument with my mom was about social media.
- [45:26]
Sarah Gardner
Why didn't the mom, Karen is her name, I think, take the phone away?
- [45:32]
Nikki Petrossi
She did at times. And I. I can't wait to hear her talk more about this. She did at times. And I think Kaylee would sneak it and get it back. I think that Kaylee would use other devices that she found, but also Kaylee would put up such a fight and then obvi. And then also threatened to hurt herself. And at that time, the therapy, the therapists didn't realize the harm. So they would be like, well, it's a coping mechanism. She needs her phone. And that's not what Victoria Burke said. But Victoria Burke did say, like, I wasn't trying to get her phone taken away from her. I wanted her to have a balance in her coping skills. So I don't, I don't think therapists were realizing, like, if you take the phone away, but also when you have someone that's addicted to something and then you take it away, it can be very scary.
- [46:16]
Sarah Gardner
No, I, I agree. And given the state that she was in because of the addiction of social media and the dependency on the phone, I'm not saying she should have because that could have potentially been more dangerous. But I do worry that that is something that the jurors will be. I'm curious to see what Mark and the team's approach is to that next week because, like, you wonder if it had been fully taken away and it had gotten really bad for a while. Just, it's not fair. I'm just worried that that is going to be one of the last hurdles to overcome from the jury's perspective. Do you know what I mean?
- [46:54]
Nikki Petrossi
Yeah, totally.
- [46:56]
Sarah Gardner
So we'll see how they approach that.
- [46:58]
Nikki Petrossi
This next part, I'm gonna say made me so sad and devastated. And so Mark Lanier asked Kaylee, who was your best friend when you were a kid? And Kaylee said, my phone. And then Mark said, before your phone, who was your best friend? And Kaylee said, my sister. Oh, it's just like I don't think he was expecting her to stay phone, like phone. I think he was expecting sister and I the courtroom. Like there was tears in the courtroom be through this whole thing. It's just so devastating. So final thoughts for Mark Lanier. He took Kaylee through a few questions and he said, before social media use, did you have social media addiction? She says, no. Did you have anxiety before social media? No. Did you have social phobia? No. Depression? No. Self harm? No. Body dysmorphia? No. That she still struggles in social settings? That she can't concentrate for long periods of time? That she has self esteem issues and body dysmorphia? That that morning it had taken her four hours to get ready. But that she still spends time on social media. And Mark Lanier says during lunch, what were you doing? And she said, social media. I just want to say thank you to Kaylee for doing that. I mean, it was a long two days for her, probably the longest of her entire life. And the strength to do that and what it means to families everywhere and what she's doing, it will affect us all. We will all earn, be able to earn protections that we deserve for our kids because of this. And so, just so grateful for Kaylee.
- [48:30]
Sarah Gardner
Yes, thank you to Kayleigh. And because this is another instance of no matter what the outcome of this particular case is, we'll have this record and it will speak to other families.
- [48:41]
Brian Boland
Man, she's brave. I mean, 20 years old who's brave enough to stand up in a high profile case against an incredibly well funded army of companies and their lawyers and to fight for what she believes to be true. I don't know how this case works out. I don't know how the jury decides, but I do know that people are listening. I do know that it's made an impact. I do know that her bravery has mattered a ton. And so I think, you know, I'd love for other people to feel inspired by her, not because of the harm she's gone through, but because the way that she's redeeming it and standing up and saying, look, we need to fight for the future that we all want to have here. And so I think it's incredibly inspiring, I think it's incredibly brave and I'm just impressed with what she's done.
- [49:26]
Nikki Petrossi
We also spent a little bit of time right at the end of Friday afternoon with another of Kaylee's therapists, Dr. Kara Baggett, which will bring listeners up to speed with next week because we just scratched the surface with her. Now we're going to move to a section that we call Moments that Mattered. And this is what stood out to us this week surrounding the trial.
- [49:51]
Sarah Gardner
On Wednesday, we had this incredibly powerful moment where young people sort of join KGM in saying to the public, like we, we see ourselves in Kayleigh, we've gone through these similar things. We also were addicted and used by social media companies. And we had Lennon Torres from the Heat Initiative, who's my incredibly powerful and amazing colleague, and Nikki Iyer from Design it for Us, speaking about how we are all kgm, which is such a powerful idea that young people see themselves in this young woman as also being used by big Tech as guinea pigs for how addictive their platforms were and suffering the consequences.
- [50:38]
Christine Ahmadijan
Safety is not the default online.
- [50:42]
Sarah Gardner
Growing up, I experienced theft, theft of my attention, theft of my childhood, theft of the childhood of millions. And not only was it theft, Big Tech took our childhood and renamed it
- [50:58]
Christine Ahmadijan
and reshaped it, morphed it into something
- [51:01]
Sarah Gardner
that they said would benefit us. You stole my attention. Something was taken from me without me knowing it. Lennon speaks about how the injustice of this, that young people were put through this without protections, without the knowledge of just how harmful these products were going to be. And. And something that Lennon talks about a lot too, is the randomness that some kids make it out okay and others don't. Right. And this is actually really important and ties to Kayleigh's experience, which is that any of this could, could happen to any young person who's exposed to these social media companies. It's not about how good of a parent you have or how strong of a family dynamic you have or don't have. It is in some ways just the randomness of who makes it through and who doesn't. Right. And that's so sad and tragic. But it also helps ground us in the fact that these cases aren't just outliers where some kids have been harmed in this way. The harm is extensive and industrial, like it is at an industrial scale. All these young people have felt it, and a few of them are talking about it now. But soon we'll just learn how pervasive that harm really was. And so that press conference was just so monumental because now we're hearing from not just parents and one family, we're also hearing from young people themselves who experienced this harm real time, and they were the first generation to experience it in this way.
- [52:37]
Nikki Petrossi
When you talk about it being such a common situation and story, you know, there were parent survivors in the courtroom listening to Kaylee's testimony this week, who've lost their children to social media harms. And they were telling me, like, this is. That's my daughter. Like, it's the same thing that happened to our family.
- [52:55]
Christine Ahmadijan
What was interesting for me is that I saw a lot of similarities from what this therapist was discussing to what I had seen going on with my daughter Coco. And like this therapist said back in 2019, we really had no knowledge of, like, you know, social media addiction. Um, and obviously it's still not on the DSM 5, so it's not like something that you can officially diagnose.
- [53:18]
Sarah Gardner
But she acknowledged that it was a
- [53:21]
Christine Ahmadijan
big part of, you know, what was going on with Kaylee and her, you know, her diagnosis.
- [53:27]
Nikki Petrossi
And then we have young people in the courtroom watching this telling us that Kaylee's story is their story too.
- [53:34]
Christine Ahmadijan
I almost forget that every, like almost every other person in my age group is, you know, also has this, the tendency to do this, to try to make themselves look a certain way before they put themselves on social media. Because that's just what we have been wired to do is you have to look a certain way, your skin has to look a certain way. You can't, you know, you can't, you can't be perceived the way that you actually are because you have to look like this and you have to have this filter or that. And it's just second nature to us. And in my mind I immediately realized that that shouldn't be second nature. It's not, it is not normal for that to be second nature that I need to apply this filter and look this way. It's, it's to the point where when, you know, we hop on a zoom call, I have to have like a blurring feature or something. It is to that point where I cannot be perceived unless my skin looks a certain way. And that started on Instagram because I remember that as the first place where I accessed this sort of the ability to do this.
- [54:37]
Sarah Gardner
I just think that that's also really important because it goes to show a pattern like when other people are recognizing themselves in this particular moment, whether it's the parents recognizing themselves or young people recognizing themselves. And Kayleigh, that just goes to show that this is not a one off situation, right? That this was happening to millions and millions of families and still, still is.
- [55:03]
Nikki Petrossi
Because just this week, 33 new cases were filed. In this JCCP grouping of cases so consolidated with Kaylee, 33 new families have brought lawsuits. And these kids are between age 10 to 19 years old. So a favorite quote for the week. I don't know if it's my favorite or something that appalled me, but it was when Christos Good Rose said, quote, we don't want people to be addicted to YouTube any more than we want them to be addicted to good books or learning things or music.
- [55:34]
Sarah Gardner
Sorry, I'm just laughing because I'm like imagining my son who loves Harry Potter, who has read them all many, many times. But like he doesn't just sit there and reread it over and over and over and over and over and over and over for five to six hours in a row.
- [55:46]
Nikki Petrossi
And like, I'm okay even then they want to read. Yeah, I mean, he talked about how his daughter would read all night, and it made him worried about her sleep. But listen, learning things. Are we worried about our kids learning too many things? Christos Goodrow. Like, what are you saying?
- [56:01]
Sarah Gardner
Well, also, by the way, I actually have had to tell Karen to stop reading at night and go to bed. But a book is just something. It doesn't have that, like, addictive nature of social media, which is, like, on the next thing. On to the next thing, you can, like, close it and just, like, put it away. It doesn't have lights.
- [56:18]
Nikki Petrossi
Doesn't have lights. Doesn't have crazy strangers. Yeah. Great, great, great.
- [56:22]
Sarah Gardner
I'm gonna vote for a book.
- [56:24]
Nikki Petrossi
I vote for books and learning things
- [56:26]
Sarah Gardner
for a whole day.
- [56:28]
Nikki Petrossi
You have at it.
- [56:29]
Sarah Gardner
Great.
- [56:31]
Nikki Petrossi
But don't get addicted. Now we have a section called Lawyers said what? And I picked up on something here that is very interesting. Louis Lee is the main trial attorney for YouTube, and he has sort of started taking on some of the strategies and, like, habits of Mark Lanier. So he'll talk about a roadmap. He'll draw things out and write things out.
- [56:59]
Brian Boland
What?
- [57:00]
Nikki Petrossi
You know, he's.
- [57:01]
Sarah Gardner
I hate that he's making.
- [57:02]
Nikki Petrossi
Yeah, it's very strange. He's realizing that Mark Lanier is, like, capturing everyone's attention, doing such an incredible job, and he's trying to come up to that level is what I'm observing. Okay. So Louis Lee's handwriting is messy, though. So he'll admit, like, okay, he was writing out the Math equation during Dr. Chandler's part, and it was really hard to follow because you couldn't really read what he was doing. So Mark Lanier hands him a sheet where Mark Lanier had written out the math that Louis Lee was trying to do and was like, here you go, sir. And he wrote it super clearly. And so Louis Lee uses Mark Lanier's equation for his. His part. Everyone is laughing, and Louis Lee says, quote, this is what happens when you're sitting next to a pro. I feel honored to be here.
- [57:47]
Sarah Gardner
What? Oh, my gosh, it's wild. But this is that whole dynamic that you and I don't understand a little bit, which is fine.
- [57:55]
Nikki Petrossi
But, like, he admits that Mark Lanier is the pro. Like, another attorney this week said to me, lanier doesn't lose. Like, you've already won, like, knock, knock, knock. But, like, he's just, like, it's incredible to watch him. And I know I praise him all the time, like, biggest fan girl of him and his. His team. But to have the YouTube attorney say that he's a pro and I. And that he feels honored to be here. Like, in Linear's presence was such a strange thing to utter when you're trying to make these arguments.
- [58:30]
Sarah Gardner
I don't know if. I don't know if we can weigh in on that because I feel like we don't know enough of the lawyer. It does. It feels like to me, when you watch the super bowl and then all the teams are like, they were just about to, like, eat each other and take each other out, and then they're hugging afterwards, and you're like, wait, what is this dynamic? But I guess there is a share to be at this level. There's some sense of respect of your career fortitude, that you are a powerful, strong, smart enough lawyer to make it to this level, and Linear to your point is the top. So those are dynamics that I feel not qualified to weigh in on. But it is fascinating to observe. I'm sure it would have been really interesting to see in real time and observing.
- [59:13]
Nikki Petrossi
What I've observed is that they do pal around a little bit because they have to work together. There's a lot of times they have to confer and try to decide something and not. They don't want to bring the judge into it and have to file motions and all these things. That takes more time and money. And so them getting along is important, and them getting through this process without some. Something major happening is important. And so there is that camaraderie a little bit. Yeah, for sure.
- [59:39]
Sarah Gardner
I also think Mark writing it and handing it to him, clearly he didn't think that that information was damning enough. He wouldn't have drawn attention to it if he thought it was more consequential than it was. Do you know what I mean?
- [59:52]
Nikki Petrossi
Yeah. Well, they go back and forth. And so Mark Lanier was likely gonna put that thing up as well and have Dr. Chandler go through it. So you have to work on that.
- [60:00]
Sarah Gardner
It wasn't like he was helping him establish something that was new and particularly damning.
- [60:05]
Nikki Petrossi
It was more just like, I wrote it more clearly. Wow. Let everyone read it. I wrote it out
- [60:12]
Sarah Gardner
foreign.
- [60:16]
Nikki Petrossi
Next week in court, we're going to continue hearing from Dr. Bagot, who is Kaylee's therapist, who actually did diagnose her with social media addiction. And I did talk to another doctor who's like, yeah, it's not in the DSM 5, but I still put it on there. I still write it down. So I guess there are therapists who you can't get like, the insurance coverage but will literally write down social media addiction as the diagnosis. So we're going to continue hearing from Dr. Baggot. We are going to hear from Kayleigh's mom. I've heard potentially another data expert. And then meta whistleblower Arturo Behar, who we have interviewed on the Heat is on and we're really looking forward to hearing from him. I also want to tease that we have a bonus episode dropping later this week with Brian Boland, the meta whistleblower who you've heard from throughout this episode. So next week we're back in the courtroom. As the trial continues, we will be translating what we hear into meaning takeaways for parents like us. Because when it comes to companies that are in our kids pockets and even in their schools, we need to be paying attention. Please share this episode Please join our email list@browingtodeath.com Heat I've been hearing from parents who are keeping up on Instagram with my trial updates and being like, I don't actually want to go to Instagram every day for this. So we are sending near daily emails. So join that email list to get get more detailed updates. And in this fight where it's the biggest companies in the world versus families, as always, we stand with families. Next time on the Heat is on. Big tech on trial. We have meta whistleblower Brian Boland.
- [61:47]
Brian Boland
You think about like the fact that people feel compelled to first thing in the morning check their phone and they feel the buzz and they like pull out their phone and they have time to kill and they pull out their phone and they're like going to Instagram or they're going to TikTok every single time. And every free moment and spare second of the day is spent checking back in, checking back in, checking back in. That feels more compulsive, more addictive. And you know, I read Adam Mosseri's like I'm Addicted to a Netflix show is the most insane comparison because I've never been like, I'm standing in line, like, I need to, I need to catch a minute of this Netflix show so I can go to my next minute later. Like, doesn't work that way.