Meta hooked children on Facebook and Instagram, US court hears

Meta Faces Six-Week Trial Over Alleged Addiction of Young Users

Ninoda.com – In Oakland, California, a jury began weighing whether the social media giant deliberately engineered its platforms to grip the attention of children and teenagers. The proceeding, expected to run for six weeks, marks the most significant legal confrontation yet for the company behind Facebook and Instagram.

Opening Arguments: California’s Case

Megan O’Neill, serving as lead counsel for the state of California, anchored her Tuesday opening remarks on millions of internal documents Meta produced during discovery. Those materials spanned proprietary research, staff correspondence, and messaging threads extending all the way to chief executive Mark Zuckerberg.

O’Neill told the jury that Meta identified “millions” of users aged 11 and 12 on Instagram yet “did little to keep them off” the platform. She further contended that the company understood its products damaged adolescent mental health while simultaneously marketing those same products as safe for children.

“Hook the users; hold them for as long as they can; harvest their data; hide the truth from the public when making public statements.”

That summary, offered by O’Neill, was meant to capture what she described as Meta’s core business logic. She warned the jury that the gap between the company’s public messaging and its private findings would become unmistakable over the coming weeks.

“Meta said it put safety over profits, but hid the reality that, time and again, when it came to make a decision, profits won.”

Among the internal research O’Neill highlighted was a finding that “Teens have an addict’s narrative about use.” Another document she directed the jury’s attention to concluded that “product features designed to increase time spent are inherently at odds with well-being and take away from people’s ability to focus on activity that adds value to their lives.”

Meta’s Rebuttal

Paul Schmidt, lead attorney representing Meta, moved quickly to dismantle the states’ narrative. He acknowledged the internal report showing that “1 in 5 teens says Instagram makes them feel worse,” then pressed the jury on what the same document revealed elsewhere.

“That 41% of teens said it made them feel better and another 41% said it had no effect.”

Schmidt also challenged the premise that social media addiction is a recognized phenomenon, arguing no credible research substantiates the claim. He cited prior public statements by Zuckerberg and Adam Mosseri, head of Instagram, in which both executives maintained the platforms were not engineered to be addictive.

On the question of age verification, Schmidt contended that the very privacy statutes the states alleged Meta violated had constrained the company’s ability to retain and deploy the data necessary to identify and restrict underage accounts effectively.

What the States Are Seeking

The underlying suit was filed in 2023 by 29 US states, including California and New York. Plaintiffs allege repeated breaches of federal and state child-privacy regulations. They are pursuing billions of dollars in damages and are pressing Meta to overhaul Instagram and Facebook features, specifically the elimination of public “like” counters and the infinite-scroll mechanism.

The jury will now spend the next six weeks sifting through testimony from attorneys on both sides before rendering a verdict on whether Meta’s design choices crossed the line from business strategy into deliberate manipulation of young minds.