Meta targeted children to boost Facebook and Instagram use, lawyer says as landmark trial begins

Meta Platforms META.O intentionally sought to addict children to its Facebook and Instagram platforms, a lawyer for California said on Tuesday at the start of a trial that could reshape some of the most popular apps on the planet. A bipartisan group of 29 U.S. states is suing Meta, seeking potentially tens or hundreds of billions of dollars in penalties and changes to how Meta does business. Four lead states — California, Colorado, Kentucky and New Jersey — accuse Meta of designing Facebook and Instagram to hook young users, fueling anxiety, depression and even suicide, and misleading consumers about the platforms’ safety. Jurors will hear claims by all 29 states that Meta violated federal law by improperly collecting and using personal data of children while they used its platforms. Megan O’Neill, a deputy attorney general for California, told the eight-person jury in Oakland, California, 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.” Jurors are expected to issue an advisory verdict, but U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers will determine Meta’s liability. If she finds Meta liable, 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. Meta co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Instagram chief Adam Mosseri are expected to testify. The trial is scheduled to last six weeks. BIGGEST TEST YET 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 has said penalties could be as high as $1.4 trillion, close to the Menlo Park, California-based company’s market value. Attorneys general have yet to specify penalties but said at a hearing last week the amount could be closer to $200 billion — equivalent to about three years of after-tax profit for Meta. California, Colorado, Kentucky and New Jersey also 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. It does,” she said. But she said Meta 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 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.” CRITICS SPEAK UP AT COURTHOUSE In a statement before the trial, a Meta spokesperson said the states’ claims are unsubstantiated and 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 penalize Meta for industry-wide challenges like age verification,” the spokesperson 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 victimized 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 whistleblower Frances Haugen testified to a U.S. Senate committee that Meta knew its products were unsafe for children and knew how to fix the problem, but did nothing in favor of pursuing higher profits. Meta and other social media companies including Snap Inc SNAP.N, TikTok parent ByteDance and YouTube parent Alphabet GOOGL.O face thousands of lawsuits by states, municipalities, school districts and individuals over whether their products harm young users.