Former Meta engineer says Instagram took a ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ approach on kids under 13

Former Meta engineering director Arturo Béjar testified Wednesday at a landmark federal trial in Oakland, California, that Instagram took a 'don't ask, don't tell' approach to children under 13, prioritizing profits over safety. The trial pits Meta against California, Colorado, Kentucky, and New Jersey, which are among 29 states that sued the tech giant in 2023 over child safety and privacy. Béjar said employee performance reviews focused on user numbers and time spent, making safety an 'afterthought.'

Getting your Trinity Audio //trinityaudio.ai player ready... By BARBARA ORTUTAY, AP Technology Writer OAKLAND — A former engineering director at Meta who has testified before Congress about child safety https://www.mercurynews.com/2026/08/18/she-died-by-design-grieving-mothers-condemn-meta-as-trial-begins-in-oakland/ on Instagram told jurors Wednesday at a landmark trial https://www.mercurynews.com/2026/08/18/meta-hid-the-truth-about-harms-to-children-california-says-as-oakland-trial-opens/ that the company took a “don’t ask, don’t tell” approach on kids under 13 on its platforms. During his second day of testimony, Arturo Béjar https://apnews.com/article/social-media-teens-meta-instagram-arturo-bejar-5f7fb7d55fb9f0da12cf3a57837fa0c5 said Meta consistently prioritized profits over safety in designing its products, focusing on how often and for how long people used them, even if it was detrimental to their mental well-being. RELATED: Meta ‘hid the truth’ about harms to children, California says as Oakland trial opens “If you step away from the product, they are not going to make any money,” he said. The trial that began Tuesday in federal court in Oakland, California, pits Meta against the states of California, Colorado, Kentucky and New Jersey and is expected to last about six weeks. The four states were among 29 that sued the tech giant https://apnews.com/article/instagram-facebook-children-teens-harms-lawsuit-attorney-general-1805492a38f7cee111cbb865cc786c28 in 2023 over child safety and privacy — the other 25 will go to trial later. The company also faces lawsuits https://apnews.com/article/meta-social-media-trials-50b3050f8e257e578a9b5c02a947c95a in state courts, including one underway in Tennessee. The lawsuit accuses Meta of contributing to the youth mental health crisis https://apnews.com/article/social-media-victims-harm-kosa-f7bb6fb95ab761d53d2d1f135eca2f27 by knowingly and deliberately designing features that addict children https://apnews.com/article/influenced-social-media-mental-health-advice-620e277528728498c1202690d0512f85 to its platforms and hide these harms from the public. It also argues that Meta routinely collects data on children under 13 without their parents’ consent, in violation of federal law. “The attitude in particular on Instagram was ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell,’” Béjar said in response to a question about his perception of the company’s attitude towards users under 13. The company has rejected the claims and said evidence at the trial will show its commitment to safety. “You will hear over the course of this case a lot of important issues, issues like teen mental health, issues like social media, issues like how teens use social media,” Meta lawyer Paul Schmidt said Tuesday. “Those are important issues, and they’re issues where Meta believes that it has a responsibility. It has a responsibility to act on its own. It has a responsibility to try to work with teens and parents in partnership to try to address those questions.” Plaintiffs’ witness says safety was an ‘afterthought’ Béjar worked at Facebook from 2009 to 2015, attracting wide attention for his work to combat cyberbullying. He returned from 2019 to 2021 as a contractor to work on safety issues. He testified before Congress in 2023 https://apnews.com/article/social-media-teens-meta-instagram-arturo-bejar-5f7fb7d55fb9f0da12cf3a57837fa0c5 about social media and the teen mental health crisis, saying that Meta executives, including CEO Mark Zuckerberg, knew about harms Instagram was causing but chose not to make meaningful changes to address them. In his testimony Wednesday, Béjar said employee performance reviews and compensation for those who worked on user-facing products were mostly focused on user numbers and how long they spend with those products. “In that context, safety was an afterthought,” he said. RELATED: ‘She died by design’: Grieving mothers condemn Meta as trial begins in Oakland The states are seeking changes to user experiences for Facebook and Instagram as well as financial damages, which could include billions of dollars in penalties. In a written statement, the office of California’s attorney general said if Meta loses, the amount of any damages would be set by the court. “This case is about stopping Meta from offering a dangerous product to teens, and from lying to teens, families, and the public about the dangerousness of their platforms. The primary remedy under our state consumer protection law is an injunction,” the statement said. Béjar walked through Meta features he said were designed for adults and are “inherently unsafe for teenagers.” This includes video autoplay, which can mean teens see videos that may cause them harm even if they don’t click on them; as well as various counters that track how many people liked, viewed or commented on your content or how many followers you have. Child development experts have noted teenagers are more susceptible to social comparison than adults, so products that reward popularity can be more harmful to their mental health. Age verification has been criticized for not going far enough Meta says users must be at least 13 years old to create an account, in line with federal child privacy laws. But Béjar testified that he found “tens of thousands” of kids under 13 on Instagram through his research. He said it was “common knowledge” at the company that such young children were on Instagram. “Meta has one of the most sophisticated infrastructures in the world to detect fake accounts,” he said. But despite that, he added, there were “no goals, no metrics” to detect and check kids’ ages who were suspected to be under 13. Over the years, Meta has introduced features it says are designed to make the experience safer for young people. But Béjar said these did not work. For instance, a tool called “Take a Break https://apnews.com/article/technology-business-europe-media-social-media-6e6967d77f2d90fa89ea839d684ae4fb ,” introduced in 2021, is a feature that is “designed to fail,” he said. First, it is a setting that people have to turn on if they want to use it. Béjar said that in his experience building settings, very few users actually go through the trouble of turning them on. He compared it to an airbag that drivers have to turn on every time they get in a car. “A safety tool has to be on by default,” he said. The feature can also be dismissed with a tap of a finger. If Meta was serious about wanting users to take a break, Béjar said, it would not be so easily swiped away. AP Technology Writer Kaitlyn Huamani contributed to this story from Los Angeles.