Getting your
Trinity Audioplayer ready...Meta goes on trial this week in Oakland over allegations it built Facebook and Instagram to addict children, concealed the resulting harm and illegally collected young users’ data, a case that Meta says could expose it to as much as $1.4 trillion in penalties or force fundamental changes to two of the world’s largest social media platforms.
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The potentially greater peril is not the financial penalty, experts said, but a court order stripping away features that drive young people to spend more time on the platforms, including infinite scrolling, visible “likes,” beauty filters and engagement-boosting algorithms.
“The bigger threat to Meta is actually what we call an injunction, where a judge says, ‘You have to change this thing about your product,'” said Vincent Joralemon, a director at UC Berkeley’s Center for Law & Technology. “That could really upset their profit.”
Meta made $60 billion in profit last year, Joralemon noted.
Joralemon sees Meta’s projection of a potential $1.4 trillion hit as a “ceiling” but said penalties could amount to hundreds of billions of dollars.
Opening statements are scheduled to start Tuesday, with lawyers representing California, Colorado, New Jersey and Kentucky detailing their claims before Meta’s legal team outlines the company’s defenses.
An advisory jury will hear the case, but its findings will not be binding. U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers will make the final decision.
The four states are suing Meta under their consumer-protection laws. They also are suing on behalf of themselves and 25 other states over Meta’s alleged collection and use of personal data from children under 13 in violation of federal law.
The states claim millions of children use Meta’s platforms, including millions of Instagram users under 13. Rogers said in a June order that “millions of teens use the platforms between midnight and four a.m. on a weekly basis.”
What the states want changed
The states want Rogers to order Meta to remove allegedly addictive design features from Facebook and Instagram feeds for children under 18, including infinite scrolling, visible “likes,” beauty filters and algorithms intended to increase use.
They also want limits on young users’ daily time on the platforms, including blackout periods during school and at night. Meta could be required to prevent children from creating multiple accounts to evade parental controls and provide parents with dashboards showing their teenagers’ usage.
The states also want Meta to prevent children under 13 from accessing Facebook and Instagram, delete personal information collected from those users and purge algorithms and artificial intelligence models trained on their data.
Other requested orders would prohibit Meta from making false or misleading statements about the safety and alleged addictiveness of its platforms, their use by children or the company’s commitment to users’ well-being.
The requested injunctions could be “catastrophic” for Meta if granted, Joralemon said.
If the restrictions make Facebook and Instagram less engaging or harder for minors to use, “what you’ve done is cut off the pipeline for use of these products,” he said. “That cuts off a lot of growth metrics for Meta.”
While Meta faces a host of similar legal actions over alleged harms to young people, experts view the Oakland trial as among the most consequential because it involves more than half the nation’s states.
Meta’s rules prohibit children under 13 from creating Facebook or Instagram accounts. In September 2024, the company launched Instagram Teen Accounts, which include content screening, time limits and parental-supervision features for users 13 to 17.
What Meta allegedly knew
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s statements and actions are expected to be central to the trial. He is on the states’ witness list for three hours of testimony at some point during the trial, which is expected to last six to seven weeks.
Rogers said in a June order that evidence of “alleged deceptive statements” indicates “Meta executives and other high-ranked employees were included in email and other conversations discussing that the platforms may induce compulsive use by teens.”
The judge highlighted Zuckerberg’s “yes” response in a deposition when asked if Meta knew problematic use was “a real issue for a meaningful portion of its users.”
However, Rogers removed Zuckerberg as a defendant in 2024, saying the evidence at that time did not “plausibly support the inference that Zuckerberg participated in a scheme or directed any employee to conceal information.”
The states argued in court filings that they have “robust evidence” Zuckerberg rescinded a temporary ban on photo-modification filters replicating the effects of plastic surgery. The states claim such filters have been linked to eating disorders, anxiety and depression that can lead to suicide.
Also on the witness list are current and former Meta employees and executives, including Instagram head Adam Mosseri, along with academics and child-psychology experts.
Two prominent whistleblowers could testify: former Facebook product manager Frances Haugen and former Meta researcher Jason Sattizahn. Haugen told Congress in 2021 that company leaders knew how to make Facebook and Instagram safer but refused because they “put their immense profits before people.” Sattizahn told Congress last year that Meta covered up dangers associated with its platforms.
Joralemon said he expects Meta to argue that it used its research into young users’ experiences to reduce potential harms and that young people benefit from the social connections its platforms provide.
How Meta is fighting claims
Meta also has challenged the scientific basis of the states’ case. In a July court filing, the company argued that social media addiction “is not a recognized medical or psychiatric condition.” Even assuming it did exist, the filing said, the states lack evidence showing Meta executives’ statements denying their platforms were addictive were knowingly false.
Meta argued in a 2023 filing that its rules prohibit users under 13 from creating Facebook or Instagram accounts.
“In every case of under-13 use, a decision was made to violate the service’s terms of use and create an account,” the company said, adding that any harms from those signups are “reasonably avoidable” by the users themselves.
Statements by company employees or executives about product safety and user well-being were matters of opinion, not fact, the company said.
Meta also claims Section 230 of the federal Communications Decency Act, which insulates social media companies from liability over content posted by third parties, and the First Amendment prevent it from being held liable.
The states contend they are challenging Meta’s own product design and representations about safety, rather than attempting to hold it responsible for content posted by its users.
Meta also disputes the states’ claims that accounts involving children’s programs and characters show Facebook and Instagram were directed at children. The company said accounts featuring properties such as “Bluey,” “Paw Patrol” and “Sesame Street” provide information to parents rather than programming or interactive content for children.
The states argue Meta “was well-aware of the addictiveness of its platforms and designed and implemented several novel features intended to induce more compulsive use, all based on extensive internal research into the unique vulnerabilities of the teenage brain.”
Those features include image filters and the ability for teenagers to create multiple accounts to evade parental oversight, the states said.
The states also claim Meta’s voluntary tools for limiting teenagers’ social media use are undermined by other features encouraging them to remain on the platforms. Meta’s age-verification processes remain insufficient, they argue, allowing children under 13 to create accounts and evade parental oversight.
Meta responded to public criticism with statements that “deceptively sought to reassure consumers that it prioritizes health and safety over its own business interests,” the states claimed.
Recent verdicts raise the stakes
The Oakland case follows two major courtroom losses for Meta earlier this year.
In March, a Los Angeles jury found Meta and Google’s YouTube liable for harm to a young woman who testified that she became addicted to their products as a child. Jurors awarded her $3 million in compensatory damages and $3 million in punitive damages, with Meta assigned 70% of the total.
A day earlier, a New Mexico jury found Meta knowingly harmed children’s mental health and concealed what it knew about child sexual exploitation on its platforms. Jurors imposed a $375 million penalty.
A judge later ordered Meta to put an additional $567 million into programs addressing harm to young people, bringing the total to $942 million. The judge also ordered changes in New Mexico that include hiding public “like” counts and imposing mandatory time limits for users under 18. Meta plans to appeal.
No matter the final financial penalty, Joralemon said, restrictions that reduce young people’s engagement could threaten something even more valuable to Meta: its future growth.