Meta has denied allegations that it deliberately designed Facebook and Instagram to addict children for financial gain as a major federal trial involving 29 US states began in California.
The bipartisan coalition is seeking potentially hundreds of billions of dollars in penalties, along with sweeping changes to the way the technology company operates its platforms.
California, Colorado, Kentucky and New Jersey, which are leading the case, allege that Meta engineered features to keep young users online for longer, contributing to anxiety, depression and suicide. The states also claim the company misled the public about the risks posed by its services.
All 29 states have separately accused Meta of violating federal law by improperly collecting and using children’s personal information.
The trial, which opened before an eight-member jury in an Oakland federal court on Tuesday, is being viewed as the most significant legal examination yet of social media’s potential impact on younger users.
Meta is among several major technology companies facing thousands of similar lawsuits from states, municipalities, school districts and individuals. Snap, TikTok owner ByteDance and YouTube parent Alphabet have also been accused of developing products that harm children and teenagers.
Megan O’Neill, a deputy attorney general for California, told jurors that Meta’s business strategy was to “hook the users, hold them for as long as they can, harvest their data, and then hide the truth from the public.”
“It worked especially well for kids,” O’Neill added. “Meta needed kids, and it needed to reassure the people who cared about those kids that the kids are safe.”
Meta attorney Paul Schmidt acknowledged that some people experience difficulties while using social media, but argued there was no definitive research establishing a link between adolescent social media use and poorer well-being.
He also said Meta co-founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg wanted to improve the company’s platforms rather than make them unsafe.
“They don’t believe they’re going to do well if people don’t like their service,” Schmidt said.
Although the jury is expected to deliver an advisory verdict, US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers will ultimately decide whether Meta is legally responsible. A finding against the company could result in civil penalties and court-ordered changes to Facebook and Instagram.
Meta has estimated that potential penalties could reach $1.4 trillion, roughly equivalent to the company’s market value. State attorneys general argued at a hearing last week that the figure was more likely to be around $200 billion, or approximately three years of Meta’s after-tax profit.
The four lead states are also seeking significant changes to the platforms, including removing likes and infinite scrolling, introducing time restrictions for younger users and strengthening measures intended to prevent children under 13 from opening accounts.
Former Meta safety engineer Arturo Bejar began giving evidence as the states’ first witness following the opening arguments. Bejar has repeatedly alleged that the company knew its child-protection systems were ineffective and has previously testified against Meta in four trials.
Meta attempted to prevent him from appearing, alleging that he had deleted Signal messages exchanged with former employees. Rogers rejected the request, describing it as an unlikely attempt to exclude an important witness.
Bejar told jurors that “move fast and break things” was a mantra inside Meta and claimed the company followed a “don’t ask, don’t tell” approach when assessing whether children under 13 were using its platforms.
“Many products were shipped into the world,” including short-form video feature Reels, “and safety was not a consideration in how it was initially deployed,” Bejar said.
Zuckerberg and Instagram head Adam Mosseri are also expected to take the witness stand during the six-week trial.
O’Neill stressed that the states were not seeking to shut down Meta and acknowledged that social media “has some benefits for some people.”
However, she accused the company of exploiting children by studying how their brains responded to digital stimuli and closely monitoring their behaviour on its apps.
According to O’Neill, an internal email sent to Mosseri identified “teen time spent” as a company objective, while some Meta employees privately compared Instagram to a “drug” and described themselves as “pushers.”
“Meta found the younger a kid is when they start using the app, the better,” O’Neill said.
Schmidt said employees sometimes used “loose” language in private communications, but rejected the suggestion that Meta’s services were addictive. He added that jurors would hear about the safety work undertaken by the employee who had referred to Instagram as a drug.
Critics of the company gathered outside the courthouse as proceedings began. Among them was Mary Rodee, whose 15-year-old son Riley Basford died by suicide in 2021 after allegedly being targeted by a predator on Facebook.
“They call it spontaneous suicide,” she said. “I call it what it was, the predictable outcome of a system that protects corporations instead of children.”
The states filed the lawsuit in 2023, two years after whistleblower Frances Haugen told a US Senate committee that Meta knew its products were unsafe for children and understood how to address the risks, but failed to act because doing so could reduce profits.
The Oakland proceedings follow two recent legal defeats for Meta. In March, a Los Angeles jury ordered Meta and Google to pay $6 million to a woman who said she became addicted to Instagram and YouTube as a child.
Earlier this month, a New Mexico judge ordered Meta to pay $567 million after the state’s attorney general argued that its platforms constituted a public nuisance affecting teenagers’ mental health.
Meta is also defending a separate case in Nashville brought by Tennessee’s attorney general over similar allegations involving Instagram. The company’s shares closed 4.4% lower at $543.67 on Tuesday.
