A federal jury in Oakland, California, will hear opening statements Tuesday in a trial that could cost Meta Platforms $1.4 trillion over claims the tech giant deliberately designed Facebook and Instagram to hook young users.
A bipartisan coalition of state attorneys general argues Meta built features like infinite scroll, autoplay video and constant notifications specifically to keep kids scrolling, whatever the cost to their mental health.
Meta rejects the case outright.
“The State AGs may call this a landmark case, but their limited claims are unsubstantiated and their financial demands are vastly disproportionate,” a Meta spokesperson said in a statement, adding that the states “offer no proof anyone in their states was misled.”
The states see it differently. California Attorney General Rob Bonta, who led the original 2023 investigation, put it bluntly when the suit was first filed.
“Our bipartisan investigation has arrived at a solemn conclusion,” Bonta said. “Meta has been harming our children and teens, cultivating addiction to boost corporate profits.”
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Twenty-nine states joined that October 2023 filing, though only four are pressing their case before a jury this month: California, Colorado, New Jersey and Kentucky. Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser framed the stakes in even blunter terms.
“We have a youth mental health crisis in the United States,” Weiser said. “The young people were brought down rabbit holes.”
The lawsuit goes beyond addictive design. The states also allege Meta violated federal privacy law by collecting data from minors without parental consent, a separate claim that could carry its own penalties on top of the $1.4 trillion figure Meta itself cited as the potential exposure.
Movieguide® has tracked this fight long before it reached a federal courtroom. When social psychologist Jonathan Haidt exposed Meta’s own internal research last year, Movieguide® reported on findings the company had tried to keep quiet:
“They did 31 studies… showing that this is addictive. They talk about it. They use the word ‘addiction.'”
That admission lands hard for parents who’ve spent years prying a phone out of a teenager’s hands at the dinner table. Movieguide® has long argued that watching a child’s screen time closely isn’t paranoia — it’s plain parenting, and the mounting court record now backs up that instinct.
This isn’t Meta’s first reckoning, and it likely won’t be the last. A New Mexico judge ordered the company to pay $567 million earlier this year over child safety failures, and a Los Angeles jury separately found Meta and YouTube liable after a young woman testified their platforms fueled anxiety and depression that began when she was 14. A federal appeals court has also cleared the way for thousands of similar lawsuits nationwide to proceed against Meta and other tech companies.
Meta insists it has already addressed the concerns, pointing to teen account restrictions and parental supervision tools rolled out in recent years. The states counter that those changes came only after lawsuits, not before them.
Opening statements begin Tuesday, and the trial is expected to run seven weeks. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Instagram head Adam Mosseri could both be called to testify before a jury decides whether the world’s largest social network built its success on a habit it never wanted broken.
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