Feb 18 (Reuters) – Meta Platforms Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg on Wednesday rebutted in court a lawyer’s suggestion that he had misled Congress about the design of his social media platforms, as a landmark trial into young people’s addiction to social media continues.
Zuckerberg was asked about his statements to Congress in 2024, in a hearing in which he stated that the company did not set a goal for its teams to maximize the time spent on its applications.
Mark Lanier, a lawyer for a woman who accuses Meta of harming her mental health as a child, showed jurors emails from 2014 and 2015 in which Zuckerberg outlined plans to increase time spent on the app by a double-digit percentage margin. Zuckerberg said that while Meta previously had goals related to the time users spent on the app, the company has changed its approach.
Take advantage of the stock market rise!
“If you are trying to say that my testimony was not accurate, I strongly disagree,” Zuckerberg said.
This was the first time the billionaire Facebook founder had testified in court about Instagram’s impact on the mental health of young users.
Although Zuckerberg has already testified on the matter before Congress, the consequences are greater at the jury trial in Los Angeles, California. Meta may have to pay damages if it loses the case, and the verdict could weaken big tech companies’ long-running legal defense strategy against allegations of harm to users.
Continues after advertising
The lawsuit and others like it are part of a global backlash against social media platforms due to their impacts on children’s mental health. Australia has banned access to social media platforms for users under 16, and other countries, including Spain, are considering similar restrictions. In the US, Florida prohibited companies from allowing access to users under 14 years of age. Technology sector associations are challenging the law in court.
The case involves a California woman who started using Meta’s Instagram and Google’s YouTube when she was still a child. She alleges that companies sought to profit from addicting children to their services, even though they knew that social media could harm their mental health. She claims the apps fueled her depression and suicidal thoughts and seeks to hold the companies accountable.
Meta and Google denied the allegations and highlighted their efforts to add features that protect users. Meta frequently cites a study from the US National Academy of Sciences that concludes that research does not show that social media affects children’s mental health.
The lawsuit serves as a test case for similar claims in a larger group of cases against Meta, Alphabet’s Google, Snap and TikTok. Families, school districts and states have filed thousands of lawsuits across the U.S. accusing companies of fueling a mental health crisis among young people.
Over the years, investigative reporting revealed internal Meta documents showing that the company was aware of the potential damage. Meta researchers found that teens who reported that Instagram made them feel bad about their bodies viewed significantly more content related to eating disorders than those who did not report the same, Reuters reported in October.
Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, testified last week that he was unaware of a recent Meta study that showed no link between parental supervision and teens’ attention to their own social media use. Teens with difficult life circumstances more often said they used Instagram habitually or unintentionally, according to the document presented at trial.
Continues after advertising
Meta’s lawyer told jurors at trial that the woman’s health records show her problems stem from a troubled childhood and that social media was a creative outlet for her.
