Zuckerberg accused in court of harming teens on social media

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified in court Wednesday in a landmark trial aimed at determining whether the company’s social media applications are addictive and harmful to teens. The case, held in Los Angeles Superior Court, already found that Mehta’s own research shows that parental supervision does not prevent compulsive social media use among teens, and that teens who have faced traumatic life experiences are even more likely to overuse social media.

The plaintiff, a 20-year-old lawyer who goes by the initials KGM, questioned Mr. Zuckerberg this week about whether Instagram employees were given goals to increase their daily app usage. Meta said in a previous Congressional hearing that this was not true, but a 2015 email chain presented as evidence at trial showed Zuckerberg pushing to increase the amount of time users spend on the app by 12%, according to the Associated Press.

Mr. Zuckerberg was also questioned about the use of Instagram’s beauty filters, which Meta’s own experts say should be banned for teens, and about internal documents detailing Meta’s estimates of the number of children under 13 who use Instagram. 1 meta document for 2018 said,As of 2015, 4 million children under the age of 13 had an Instagram account, including approximately 30% of children ages 10 to 12 in the United States, for example.

Zuckerberg countered by arguing that age verification is difficult and that smartphone makers like Apple could be more helpful in this regard. (With the U.S. increasingly regulating apps like Facebook and Instagram, and many states currently enacting or enacting their own social media laws, Apple recently rolled out its own age assurance tool for developers.)

During his testimony, Zuckerberg mostly stuck to the company’s talking points, at times claiming that plaintiffs’ lawyers were taking things out of context or misinterpreting documents, according to court reports.

Plaintiff KGM (also known by her first name, Kaylee) sued four social media companies, alleging that their platforms were harmful and addictive. TikTok and Snap settled before the trial began, and YouTube and Meta defended the app’s success.

During the trial, Mehta’s lawyers pointed to Kaylee’s unhappy childhood, not the social apps themselves, as contributing to her mental health concerns. The outcome of this jury trial, if found to be culpable by technology companies, could lead to major technology reforms, new laws and regulations, and settlements with victims.