Mark Zuckerberg told a jury on Wednesday that Meta no longer tried to maximize the time users spend on the platform, as the billionaire sought to rebut a landmark legal claim that social media is addictive for children.
Meta’s chief executive tried to counter internal emails and documents between 2015 and 2022 presented by plaintiffs in the case, in which he and other Meta employees explicitly said that boosting time spent was a goal or milestone, including by teen users.
Zuckerberg testified that the company no longer sets internal goals for time spent on the platform, instead focusing on “usefulness” and “value” for users in the long term.
“My focus is on building a community that is sustainable,” Zuckerberg told the court.
In tense negotiations in front of a packed courtroom, Zuckerberg repeatedly said plaintiffs’ lawyers were misrepresenting the evidence, while also saying the company no longer wanted to waste time focusing on the issue.
The case comes as social media platforms consider whether they should face legal consequences over claims their products are harmful to young people, drawing comparisons to the crackdown on Big Tobacco in the 1990s.
The Los Angeles trial is one of a series of test cases that will set the direction for a larger set of similar claims — all of which argue that Big Tech platforms knowingly cause personal injury by developing addictive products.
Thousands of individuals, school districts and state attorneys-general have filed similar lawsuits against social media platforms, demanding damages and design changes. Losing the Los Angeles case would be a major blow to Meta and Google, as it could set a precedent for a flood of similar lawsuits.
In this first case, the plaintiff, a 20-year-old girl known only as KGM, argues that she became addicted to Meta’s Instagram and Google’s YouTube during her childhood, which led to mental health problems including anxiety and depression.
Snap and TikTok reached a settlement with the same plaintiffs for an undisclosed amount shortly before the case was set to go to trial.
KGM lawyer Mark Lanier pressed Zuckerberg on the chief executive’s testimony under oath during a previous congressional hearing, in which he said under-13s were not allowed on Instagram.
Lanier presented as evidence a 2018 internal document in which company employees estimated that there were 4 million users under the age of 13 on Instagram in 2015, which is about 30 percent of all 10 to 12-year-olds in the US. Lanier also noted that the company asked for existing users’ birthdays in 2021.
Zuckerberg said the company is taking action to exclude people under the age of 13 from the platform, but acknowledged that this is “difficult to determine” due to the number of people lying about their age.
“I wish we could get there sooner,” he said, adding that the company “is in the right place now” and will add more tools to address this in the future.
The findings and statements in the case have been harmful to Meta.
Internal documents show Meta knew that beauty filters – special effects that digitally alter people’s appearance on camera to make them more attractive – could encourage body dysmorphia and other health concerns in teens.
But in 2020 Zuckerberg appeared to be pushing for reinstatement, despite resistance from other executives, citing “competition/growth” as a reason.
The documents also say Zuckerberg ignored multiple requests from executives, including former global affairs chief Nick Clegg, to direct more resources toward user well-being.
Meanwhile, further internal emails show that employees are acknowledging the potential addiction of the social platform. “IG (Instagram) is a drug… we’re basically pushy people,” one researcher wrote in an email, adding that Instagram chief Adam Mosseri “flew” when he raised the topic of dopamine hits from social media use.
Another allegation came from testimony from a former top security executive with internal documentation claiming that Meta once had a “17x” strike policy for accounts engaged in “trafficking of humans for sex.”
“This means you could face up to 16 violations for prostitution and sexual solicitation and your account will be suspended on the 17th violation,” the executive said in a statement.
Ahead of the lawsuit, Meta said in a blog post that the plaintiffs would “try to present an intentionally misleading picture of Meta with selected quotes and excerpts from conversations taken out of context”.
Meta argues that scientific research does not support the claim that social media is addictive and that other factors may cause KGM’s mental health struggles, such as family abuse.
It pointed to billions of dollars invested in child safety as evidence that there had been no negligence. Independent research on whether social media is addictive and whether it harms children’s health has yielded mixed results.
The company is also invoking Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, the US legal provision that holds that social platforms are not liable for user-generated content.
The plaintiffs argue that the case is not about the content, but rather how the platforms are designed, including features such as “likes” that encourage social comparison, “infinite scroll”, and push notifications.
The Los Angeles case is the first of a series of nine personal injury cases to be heard by jury trial. A second set of federal cases is scheduled to be heard in another federal court in California over the summer, focusing on the impact of alleged child social media addiction on schools and teachers, among others.
A separate lawsuit began this month against Meta over a case brought by the US state of New Mexico, which argued that the platform failed to remove child sexual exploitation material from its platforms and was a “prime location for predators”.
The charges follow a months-long undercover investigation into what Attorney-General Raúl Torrez’s office called “fake accounts” impersonating children aged 14 and under. Meta says there were “ethical compromises” in the way the Attorney-General conducted the investigation.
