Meta's federal trial begins over child social media addiction claims

Opening statements kicked off Tuesday in a pivotal trial for Meta Platforms in a California federal court, where states are seeking billions of dollars in damages for social media harms to children.

Attorneys general from California, Colorado, Kentucky and New Jersey are seeking a financial penalty that could, in theory, total as much as $1.4 trillion plus changes to how the company operates Facebook and Instagram. The states are among 29 that sued the tech giant in 2023 over child safety and privacy. The other 25 states will go to trial later. The company also faces lawsuits in state courts.

The lawsuit accuses the social media giant of contributing to the youth mental health crisis by knowingly and deliberately designing features that addict children to its platforms. It also argues that Meta routinely collects data on children under 13 without their parents' consent, in violation of federal law.

A jury will decide whether the states' attorneys general have made their case that the tech giant designed its apps to "hook the users, hold them for as long as they can, harvest their data and hide the truth from the public," as Megan O'Neill, a deputy attorney general for the California Department of Justice, put it in her opening statement.

"It worked especially well for kids," she added.

Paul Schmidt, an attorney for Meta, said research does not support claims that social media harms adolescents' well-being and disputed claims of addiction. He said Meta and its CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, have focused on building and improving technology for their users.

"They don't believe they're going to do well if people don't like their service," Schmidt said.

Ahead of the trial, Kentucky Attorney General Russell Coleman called it "the largest consumer protection lawsuit in American history. We'll show a jury that Meta concealed what it knew about the harm its products cause young people because looking away was more profitable." 

Meta said it believes it has a strong case.

"We are proud of our record in protecting teens on our platforms and the amount of effort that we've put into developing protections over the years, even before these cases were ever filed, and continuing to the present day. We look forward to showing the judge and the jury those facts in court," the company said in a written statement. 

States argue Meta exploited research on child development

O'Neill laid out the states' case for the eight jurors during opening statements in federal court in Oakland.

"You're going to hear that Meta knew a lot about kids' brains," O'Neill said. This includes how they are constantly seeking rewards, how they are sensitive to social feedback and "how they are still developing their ability to control impulses the way adults do."

Meta, she said, researched these vulnerabilities and talked about how it could change Instagram to respond to them.

"'The young ones are the best ones' is a title of a Meta study we are going to show you," she said, telling jurors that for Meta, "kids are the product."

Meta, O'Neill said, also knew that kids under 13 were using its products even though they were banned from it, and "failed to take the simplest most obvious steps to keep them off." For instance, she said, when Meta found that someone on Facebook was under 13, it would disable the person's Facebook account but not their connected account on Instagram.

The states called as their first witness former Meta executive Arturo Béjar, who worked as an engineering director 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.

Béjar said that, contrary to Meta's statements, the company's research on safety issues was not being used to improve products.

For example, regarding eating disorder content, Meta's engineers "had very good ideas on how to make it better" so that users, especially young ones, would not be exposed to it.

"But once it was reviewed, it got whittled down to a little pebble that didn't make a difference," he said.

Meta attorney highlights company work on safety

Schmidt laid out his case beginning with what is not disputed in the trial — that even though kids under 13 are not supposed to be on its apps, some lie about their ages; that some teens struggle to manage their time; and that some people post "negative content" on Facebook and Instagram.

But he said he will focus on the work Meta does to make its platforms safer and share information with the public.

"Much of this lawsuit is about the government attorneys and their witnesses saying in trying to improve, we'd do it a little differently," Schmidt said. "In talking about how to improve, we disagree with how you talk about it. It's meaningful, and the evidence will be meaningful, these efforts Meta has taken to improve."

Latest in a series of lawsuits challenging social media

U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers in Oakland is overseeing the proceedings, which are expected to last six to eight weeks and include testimony from Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and other executives and former employees. Gonzalez Rogers, appointed to the bench by former President Barack Obama in 2011, has overseen a bevy of complex, high-profile cases involving Big Tech. These include Elon Musk's lawsuit against OpenAI and its founders as well as Epic Games' lawsuit against Apple over its app store.

If Meta loses the trial, the court would have wide discretion over the size of any financial penalty, and legal experts say anything close to $1.4 trillion would be unlikely.

The trial is the latest in an avalanche of lawsuits against Meta Platforms and other social media companies including Google's YouTube, TikTok and Snap, over arguments that their platforms harm young people, illegally collect their data and are deliberately designed to addict them.

As the trial began, child safety advocates and parents who trace their children's deaths to social media harms gathered outside the courthouse Tuesday. Many parents held photos of their late children as they spoke to reporters outside, at times speaking through tears.

Several parents held a banner with the names and ages of children who died from social media-related harms. It was several feet long.

Mary Rodee, whose son Riley Basford died by suicide at age 15 after being sextorted on Facebook Messenger, was among the parents and said she had helped write the names. They have had to add 39 new ones to the banner since March, she said.

"It's not just a banner," Rodee said. "Every name that I wrote on there is a promise that these children will never be forgotten and that their stories will force accountability where silence once reigned."

Earlier this month, a U.S. federal appeals court denied Meta's appeal, clearing the way for thousands of lawsuits alleging that its social media platforms encourage addictive usage to proceed.

In March, Meta and YouTube were held legally liable for creating products that led to harmful and addictive behavior by young users. TikTok and Snapchat parent Snap were named in the original complaint, but settled before the trial began in late January. The jury in that case awarded $6 million to the lead plaintiff.