Meta Platforms went on trial in California on Tuesday in one of the most consequential legal challenges yet over the impact of social media on children, as 29 U.S. states accuse the company of designing Facebook and Instagram to keep young users hooked while failing to adequately protect them.
The six-week trial in federal court in Oakland could force Meta to make significant changes to two of the world’s most widely used social media platforms and expose the company to potentially enormous financial penalties.
Opening the states’ case, Megan O’Neill, a deputy California attorney general, told an eight-person jury 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.”
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“It worked especially well for kids,” O’Neill said.
The states are seeking to establish that Meta deliberately designed features of Facebook and Instagram to encourage compulsive use among children and teenagers, contributing to problems including anxiety, depression and suicide. They also allege that Meta misled parents and other consumers about the safety of its platforms.
The case is being led by California, Colorado, Kentucky and New Jersey as part of a bipartisan coalition of 29 states. The lawsuit also accuses Meta of violating federal law by improperly collecting and using children’s personal information while they used its services.
O’Neill sought to frame the case as one about corporate conduct rather than an attempt to eliminate social media.
“This case is not about whether social media has some benefits for some people. It does,” she told jurors.
“It is about whether Meta deliberately designed its platforms to addict children and whether it misled parents about the safety of those platforms.”
A Potentially Massive Financial Risk
The financial stakes are unusually high. Meta has said potential penalties could reach $1.4 trillion, roughly equivalent to the company’s market value. State attorneys general have not formally specified the amount they are seeking, but said at a hearing last week that the figure could be closer to $200 billion. That would represent roughly three years of Meta’s after-tax profit, making the case a significant financial risk even for one of the world’s largest technology companies.
The states are also seeking changes to how Facebook and Instagram operate. Among the measures sought are age restrictions, removal of infinite scrolling and other design changes intended to reduce the amount of time children spend on the platforms.
The jury is expected to issue an advisory verdict. U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers will ultimately determine whether Meta is liable and, if so, what penalties or remedies should be imposed. That gives the judge considerable influence over the case’s eventual consequences. A finding against Meta could go beyond financial penalties and force changes to product design, data practices, and the way the company manages young users.
Meta’s Defense
Meta is expected to argue that it has invested heavily in protecting teenagers and that the states have failed to demonstrate that residents were actually harmed by the company’s conduct.
The company has also rejected claims that it misled consumers about safety.
“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,” a Meta spokesperson said before the trial.
“Rather than sticking to the facts or the law, the states have instead decided to chase an outlandish payout.”
Meta’s defense will put particular emphasis on the broader challenges facing social media companies, including age verification and the difficulty of determining which users are minors.
Meta co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Instagram chief Adam Mosseri are expected to testify, putting two of the company’s most senior executives directly in the spotlight.
From Whistleblower Revelations to Courtroom Battle
The lawsuit was filed in 2023 following a multistate investigation into Facebook and Instagram’s effects on young users. The investigation gained momentum after former Meta employee and whistleblower Frances Haugen told the U.S. Senate in 2021 that the company knew its products could harm young users and had information about ways to make them safer, but failed to make sufficient changes.
The states are expected to present internal Meta documents, company research and testimony from former employees and outside experts as they seek to establish that concerns about young users were known inside the company.
The trial comes as Meta and other major social media companies face a much broader wave of litigation over children’s online safety. Snap, TikTok parent ByteDance and YouTube parent Alphabet are among the companies facing hundreds of lawsuits from states, municipalities, school districts and individuals alleging that their products can contribute to harmful or addictive patterns of use among young people.
Recent rulings have increased the pressure on the industry. In March, a Los Angeles jury ordered Meta and Google to pay $6 million to a 20-year-old 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 into a mental health fund for teenagers after the state’s attorney general argued that the company’s platforms constituted a public nuisance.