Today's true story in B1 English is of a lawyer going into court against the most powerful companies to defend children against social media.
This is David versus Goliath.
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Mark Lanier's daughter came to him with a new case.
"Daddy, there's a girl who needs you in California."
Mark was a lawyer, and Mark had already beaten some of the biggest companies. He was a 65-year-old man with 12 grandkids.
Now his daughter Rachel, also a lawyer, was building a new case for many months. She had evidence, she had witnesses.
Now her father could take it into the courtroom.
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This case was about a 9-year-old girl, Kaylee.
Now, Kaylee got hooked on YouTube when she was 6 years old. She was on Instagram when she was 9.
By 10 years old, Kaylee wasn't leaving her bedroom. Kaylee was failing at school, and she was even cutting and hurting herself.
Every time her mother took the phone away, the girl shook and cried uncontrollably.
One day, Kaylee spent more than 16 hours on Instagram. 16 hours in one day.
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On one side of the Los Angeles courtroom is Mark Lanier and his daughters.
On the other side of the courtroom is two of the world's most powerful companies, Meta and YouTube, and dozens of the world's best lawyers, and Mark Zuckerberg himself, the CEO of Meta, who owns Facebook and Instagram.
For Mark Lanier, this is a holy war — the war for the minds of our children.
In this trial, Mark Zuckerberg walked into the courtroom with his team, and they were all wearing Meta glasses with hidden cameras inside.
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Back to the story.
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Mark Lanier grew up in Texas, an ordinary childhood. His father was a salesman and his mother a housewife.
Mark went to one of the cheapest law schools in America. It cost only $4 per hour.
Mark was a talented speaker. When he spoke, he spoke with power, and people listened to him. In his first five years as a lawyer, he won every case.
Still, he lost. And he should have lost, and he deserved to lose.
He fought for a company who he knew was guilty.
"What am I doing?"
Mark asked himself as he drove home. This case he'd lost — well, it changed his life.
So Mark started his own law firm. This way he could choose which cases to take, and he could choose only cases that he believed in. Mark says, "You can do horrible things with this power, but you can also do great things."
Mark won nearly $20 billion for ordinary people, for me, for you, from drug companies, from chemical companies.
But Meta and YouTube, they were a different beast. They were Goliath, and Mark was David.
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Four months until the trial.
Mark's main task is to prove with evidence that these apps cause harm not by accident, but by design.
Cause harm on purpose.
Mark Lanier, he could ask the court for a huge sum of money, but instead he asks them for nothing.
Mark is a religious man. Every Sunday he teaches the lessons of Jesus at his local church, and Mark is also obsessed with AI.
So in the court there is the jury. The jury is the 12 people, 12 ordinary citizens, like your mum, like your dad. The jury's job is to decide if someone is innocent or guilty.
So Mark made AI versions of all 12 of the jury members.
So he knew the jury's age, their job, their family situation, and he knew the three people each jury member admired the most and admired the least.
And Mark made an AI copy of each of the jury's mind.
Mark practiced his arguments on the 12 AI versions of the jury every night. He asked them what they thought of this witness, that witness. He asked what might have confused them that day.
He slept, he says, on average just four hours a night. "Sleep's a bonus," he said, "but not one that's necessary."
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The trial.
As the trial starts, Meta says, "The girl's problems come from her difficult childhood. Her problems don't come from Instagram."
Mark says, "People of the court.
Just because someone already has a headache," he said, "that doesn't give you the right to hit them with a rock." And then say, "They already had a headache. Not my fault."
Mark and his daughters worked day and night collecting millions of pages of evidence, and they found gold.
A YouTube message from 2012 said that its goal was not to get more viewers. Oh no, its goal was to make viewers addicted.
Another document said, "These platforms are attention casinos. And the house always wins."
A Meta document from 2018 said, "To get more teenagers using the platform, we've got to get more children to use it."
Then Mark Lanier showed the jury the safety features on these platforms — so the safety features, so parents can control what their children watch and how long for.
But these safety features are very hard to find, and they automatically switch themselves off after 30 days.
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The next day, Mark Zuckerberg himself walks in, the CEO of Meta, with all his security team and lawyers.
Zuckerberg and every one of his team, all wearing Meta's new smart glasses.
People laugh, but Mark Lanier, he does not laugh. This was supposed to be a secret jury, meaning the jury should be 12 people nobody can identify. And now Mark Zuckerberg and his billion dollar team walk in with those sneaky new glasses that all have cameras inside them.
(Camera sound effect)
"Take off your glasses," says the judge.
One by one, Zuckerberg and his team take off their Meta glasses and swear they didn't already take photographs of the jury.
And maybe it was the first time these boys were told "no."
Mark Zuckerberg takes the stand.
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This is the first time Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta, has to answer to a jury in a court.
Mark Lanier shows the room how one-third of all 11-year-olds in America uses Instagram.
But how? Under-13s aren't allowed accounts.
Then Mark Lanier shows the room a giant collage, which is many photographs all stuck together.
A huge document 15 meters wide, hundreds of photos and selfies all posted by one girl — Kaylee, with filters changing her face.
And Mark asks one of the richest men in the world a simple question.
"Mr. Zuckerberg, has Meta ever looked at this girl's account and worried about her?"
Mark Zuckerberg doesn't say anything.
A fair question.
Has Meta ever worried about this girl?
Silence.
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After seven weeks, the trial finishes and the jury go into the back room.
Time to decide.
Is Meta and YouTube guilty of harming children?
They wait one day, three days, eight days. The jury stays inside that room talking, deciding.
On March 25, 2026, the jury, 12 ordinary people, come back out and give their answer.
These companies caused harm to the girl, and they had known, and they had done it anyways.
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Mark Lanier says the sad truth is, politicians will never stop these companies. The only people these companies are truly afraid of, he says, are the 12 ordinary people in the jury.
The jury do not get money, reputation or power from this.
Their only job is to tell the truth with one hand on their heart.
And that, my friends, is the power of the rule of law system, when even the richest people and kings must answer to the law.
Countries with a rule of law system means that the law is the highest power, and even the president must answer to it.
And, may I say, this rule of law system started in England, by the way, about 800 years ago, when King John had to sign a document to stop a civil war. But still today, the Magna Carta, which is his original document, this is the foundation for the rule of law system in so many countries.
But still today, there are so many countries where a nine year old girl would never, never have a chance of winning against this kind of money and power.
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So why is this so important?
Now more than 2,000 other families can now walk into a courtroom against these companies that are abusing, abusing children's minds and profiting from these extremely addictive platforms.
Completely messing with the brain's natural processes like dopamine and serotonin releases, which are our happy chemicals, which we get normally for pleasurable experiences — for nice meals, for moments with family and friends, spending time in nature, sex.
Now they get these from their phone, you see.
So they become numb and unfeeling to the pleasures in the real world.
Not so long ago, people thought smoking tobacco and nicotine was healthy, and tobacco companies spent millions trying to hide the truth.
But the day came when they were beaten in the courtroom, and look at cigarettes today, with all their restrictions.
Are we waking up finally?
Are we waking up? Maybe, because in 2024, Australia made it illegal for children under 16 to use social media.
In France, the same law will pass starting this September.
This was a David versus Goliath story.
But it's the Davids, it's the Davids out there that change the world.
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