In a forthcoming trial in Oakland accusing social media companies like Meta of knowingly addicting children to their products, the defendants have asked the judge to keep some court records sealed. 

By now, almost everyone knows about the evils of Oxycontin, how its addictive properties, dangerously high dosages, and highly manipulative marketing from Purdue Pharma caused addiction not just to “Oxy” but to heroin and fentanyl.

What is not well known is that all the information that we know about the dangers of using Oxycontin as Purdue suggested was discovered in a lawsuit filed in 2001 by the state of West Virginia. That case was settled in 2004, but everything the West Virginia attorney general learned was kept secret by court order. That secrecy was maintained for 12 more years,as literally hundreds of thousands of people died.

It wasn’t until 2016 that a team of investigative reporters for the Los Angeles Times was able to uncover the truth about Oxy. By then, the damage had been done.

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Now, a decade later, courts are focused on the addictive properties of social media platforms like Facebook and YouTube. A string of lawsuits has been filed across the country. In March, in a “bellwether trial,” or test case, in Los Angeles, a jury awarded one 20-year-old woman $4.2 million from Meta, Facebook’s parent company, and $1.8 million from YouTube, a subsidiary of Google, as damages for the addiction their social media products caused her to........

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