Attorneys for the plaintiff questioned the CEO on allegations that his products targeted young people despite known harms.
LOS ANGELES—On the most anticipated day yet of a landmark social media addiction trial that began Feb. 9, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg took the stand at the Los Angeles Superior Court on Feb. 18 to answer allegations that he engineered his social media platforms to be addictive to children despite knowing the potential harms.
Plaintiff’s attorney Mark Lanier wasted no time setting the moral tone, opening with the suggestion that there are different ways to deal with vulnerable people—help them, ignore them, or “prey upon them.”
At the center of the case is a 20-year-old California woman identified in court documents by the initials “K.G.M.” or “Kelsey G.M,” who is accusing tech giants of engineering products that rewire young people’s brains and trap them in a cycle of addiction and mental illness.
The complaint alleges the plaintiff became addicted to Instagram as a child and suffered resulting harms, including depression, anxiety, and body dysmorphia.
Hers is one of a handful of bellwether trials that will presage how thousands of related cases brought by children, parents, school districts, and state attorneys general are argued and tried—and what kind of damages might be expected.
Like Big Tobacco and national opioid settlements before them, these cases mark a generational turning point and could have profound long-term effects on how the industry operates.
Grilling the CEO
At the heart of the plaintiff’s strategy is a comparison of Zuckerberg’s previous statements—including those made under oath in congressional testimony—with a cache of thousands of pages of internal company documents, emails, and message chains, recently unsealed.
In a courtroom packed with media, lawyers, and grieving parents who say their kids’ deaths were instigated by Meta’s apps, Lanier grilled the CEO on statements he made related to Instagram age restrictions; whether the company has sought to drive user time on its apps, including among children; and scientific consensus on links between social media usage and youth mental health harms.
Zuckerberg stuck to a library of stock responses, mostly reiterating that his “north star” was to create a product that provides value to users and that the amount of time they choose to spend on a given app is a byproduct.
“I think if people use something in the near-term but aren’t happy with what they’re doing … or using it more than they want to, I don’t think it’s good for us in the long term,” Zuckerberg said.
The company has evolved policies and features over time to respond to concerns in a way that balances different stakeholder interests—users, free speech advocates, and those concerned with problematic use, including among children—according to Zuckerberg.
A rare moment of levity arrived when Lanier asked him whether he’d had lots of media training.
“I don’t know,” Zuckerberg mused. “I think I’m actually sort of well-known to be very bad at this.”
