OAKLAND, Calif. — State prosecutors laid into Meta Platforms on Tuesday as a landmark federal trial opened in Oakland, accusing the tech giant of intentionally engineering Instagram and Facebook to addict children while hiding internal research that documented the damage to young minds.
Representing a coalition of 29 state attorneys general, government lawyers told an eight-member jury that Meta prioritized screen time and advertising revenue over child safety, exploiting developing brains to lock in a new generation of users.
“You’re going to hear that Meta knew a lot about kids’ brains,” Megan O’Neill, a deputy attorney general for California, told the court in her opening statement. “They knew. Time and again, profits won.”
The trial before U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers is expected to last up to eight weeks and will feature testimony from Meta Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg and Instagram head Adam Mosseri.
While 29 states joined the underlying federal lawsuit filed in late 2023, attorneys general from California, Colorado, Kentucky and New Jersey are leading this initial trial, seeking billions of dollars in financial penalties and permanent structural changes to how Meta operates its core platforms.
States allege Meta knowingly developed addictive features — including algorithmic recommendation feeds, auto-playing video reels, push notifications and infinite scroll — that trigger dopamine loops in young users. Prosecutors claim these mechanics contributed directly to rising rates of youth anxiety, depression and eating disorders.
Internal company records presented to the jury included a Meta document titled “The young ones are the best ones,” as well as internal strategy communications acknowledging that teenagers felt “hooked despite how it makes them feel.”
Former Meta engineering director Arturo Béjar testified as the states’ first witness, stating that engineers developed practical fixes to curb exposure to harmful content, such as material promoting eating disorders. Those solutions, Béjar testified, were repeatedly watered down by leadership until they “didn’t make a difference.”
The lawsuit also accuses Meta of illegally collecting and commercializing personal data from children under 13 without parental consent, violating the federal Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act.
Meta defense attorney Paul Schmidt rejected the states’ characterization, arguing prosecutors cherry-picked internal emails out of context. Defense attorneys contended that social media offers substantial benefits to teens and highlighted features Meta introduced to manage app usage and restrict adult content for minors.
Schmidt argued that while some young people lie about their age or struggle with screen time management, these issues represent broader societal challenges rather than corporate misconduct.
Beyond monetary damages, which states estimate could reach tens of billions of dollars, the suit seeks court-ordered injunctions compelling Meta to dismantle algorithmic systems fed by minors’ data, impose strict time-limiting defaults and strip out infinite-scroll design mechanics.
The outcome could reshape operational practices across the social media industry, as parallel legal challenges proceed against TikTok, Snap and YouTube parent Alphabet in courts nationwide.
