Meta on trial: What happened on Day 1?
Prosecutors accuse Meta of designing Facebook and Instagram to keep children engaged and concealing risks
- Meta attorney says the company has taken measures for safety and disputes that social media addiction is a genuine clinical condition
- Former Meta employee Arturo Bejar tells court the company failed to act adequately on safety concerns affecting young users
A US court heard sharply opposing accounts of whether Meta knowingly built Facebook and Instagram to hook children, as opening statements on Tuesday launched a trial that could reshape how the company runs its platforms for young users.
According to US media reports, California Deputy Attorney General Megan O'Neill told the eight-member jury that Meta's approach could be reduced to four steps: hook users, hold their attention, harvest their data and hide the truth in public statements.
She argued that Meta's own internal research repeatedly showed harm to teenagers' mental health even as executives told Congress and parents the platforms were safe.
O'Neill said Meta had identified millions of users aged 11 and 12 on Instagram over the years and did little to remove them, despite a policy barring children under 13.
She cited an internal 2021 survey in which roughly one in five teenagers said Instagram made them feel worse about themselves, with sizable shares of 13-to-17-year-olds reporting exposure to bullying, unwanted sexual advances and self-harm content.
Meta attorney Paul Schmidt countered that the company's own tally of underage users found only around 100,000 - a small fraction of O'Neill's estimate - and disputed that social media addiction is a genuine clinical condition.
He acknowledged some teens struggle to manage their time on the apps but argued Meta had responded in good faith, pointing to time-management tools introduced from 2018 onward, break reminders added in 2021 and the 2024 rollout of Teen Accounts.
He also noted that the same internal survey O'Neill cited found 41% of teens reported positive feelings about their platform use, claiming the states were presenting only part of the picture.
The states' first witness, Arturo Bejar, a former Facebook engineering director who later worked on Instagram safety issues, testified that he returned to the company after his teenage daughter experienced unwanted sexual advances on the app and had no way to report them.
He told jurors Instagram had "changed from a product that you use into a product that uses you," and said Meta was skilled at tracking a metric without addressing the underlying problem it measured.
Bejar said safety considerations were sometimes treated as secondary to product development.
What happens next?
The case was filed in 2023 by a coalition of 29 US states, with California, Colorado, Kentucky and New Jersey leading the proceedings.
The states will continue presenting witnesses and evidence before Meta has an opportunity to present its defense in what is one of the biggest legal challenges the social media giant has ever faced.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Instagram head Adam Mosseri are among the executives expected to testify during the proceedings.
The trial, being held in Oakland, California, is expected to last about six weeks.
The eight-member jury is serving in an advisory role, while US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers will ultimately decide whether Meta is liable and what remedies, if any, should be imposed. The states are seeking financial penalties and changes to Meta's platforms and practices.
