Meta Platforms is once again on trial over dangers its platforms may pose to children – and it is once again arguing that it works tirelessly to keep them safe. A group of 29 United States states is suing the parent company of platforms including Facebook and Instagram.
Four lead states – California, Colorado, Kentucky and New Jersey – first sued the Mark Zuckerberg-led tech giant in 2023 over child safety and privacy.
The lawsuit accuses Meta of knowingly and deliberately designing Facebook and Instagram with features that “addict” young users to its platforms, fuelling anxiety, depression and even suicide.
It says the giant has misled consumers about harms and safety. Jurors will hear claims from all 29 states, including that Meta has violated federal law by improperly collecting young users' personal data – including children under 13, without their parents’ consent.
Megan O’Neill, a deputy attorney general for the California Department of Justice, told the eight-person jury in Oakland, California, in her opening statement that Meta’s business model 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,” she added. “Meta needed kids, and it needed to reassure the people who cared about those kids that the kids are safe.”
Meta lawyer Paul Schmidt countered in his opening statement that the company and co-founder and CEO Zuckerberg shared a desire to improve their services, not to make them dangerous. “They don’t believe they’re going to do well if people don’t like their service,” Schmidt said.
Jurors are expected to issue an advisory verdict, but US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers in Oakland will determine Meta’s liability. She will oversee the proceedings, expected to last six weeks.
Zuckerberg and Instagram chief Adam Mosseri are expected to testify. If Meta loses the trial, Gonzalez Rogers could impose civil penalties and order changes to Facebook and Instagram.
Lawyers for Meta are expected to tell the jury that the company has made a huge effort to keep kids safe online. Meta has said it did not make misleading statements about safety, and the states failed to show their residents were harmed.
Experts have said the trial is the biggest legal test yet of social media’s effects on young users, and comes amid a broader reckoning across the globe over those effects.
Meta faces thousands of lawsuits and angry parents. It is also just one of numerous social media companies, including Google’s YouTube, TikTok and Snap, that are facing lawsuits alleging harm to young people.
California, Colorado, Kentucky and New Jersey want Meta to implement age restrictions and eliminate the infinite scroll that encourages users to keep looking at new posts. O’Neill said the states were not trying to put Meta, or social media, out of business.
“This case is not about whether social media has some benefits for some people,” she said, adding that it does, but Meta had exploited children for its own benefit, researching how children’s brains work and would react to online stimuli, and tracking every interaction that children had on its apps.
She showed jurors an internal email sent to Instagram chief Mosseri, which said “teen time spent” was the company’s goal, and said Meta employees viewed Instagram as a “drug” and themselves as “pushers”.
“Meta found the younger a kid is when they start using the app, the better,” O’Neill said. “The more likely they are to remain a user, the more likely they are to make Meta money in the long run.”
In a statement before the trial, a Meta spokesman said the states’ claims are unsubstantiated and that the company stands by its record of creating strong protections for teenagers.
“The AGs offer no proof anyone in their states was misled, claim benign features like having an additional Instagram account somehow harmed their residents and attempt to penalise Meta for industry-wide challenges like age verification,” the spokesman said.
“Rather than sticking to the facts or the law, the states have instead decided to chase an outlandish payout.”
Some critics of Meta spoke outside the courthouse as the trial began. Among them was Mary Rodee, who said her 15-year-old son Riley Basford was victimised by a predator on Facebook before he died by suicide in 2021.
“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 lawsuit began in 2023, two years after whistle-blower Frances Haugen testified to a US Senate committee that Meta knew its products were unsafe for children and knew how to fix the problem, but did nothing in favour of pursuing higher profits.
If you have suicidal thoughts or know someone who is experiencing them, help is available. In Hong Kong, you can dial 18111 for the government-run Mental Health Support Hotline. You can also call +852 2896 0000 for The Samaritans or +852 2382 0000 for Suicide Prevention Services. In the US, call or text 988 or chat at 988lifeline.org for the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline. For a list of other nations’ helplines, see this page.
Additional reporting by Associated Press
