Social Media Trial: Tech Bosses Dispute 'Addiction' Claims
Tech giant Meta is no stranger to facing lawsuits, with CEO Mark Zuckerberg previously appearing in court on numerous occasions.
However, appearing in front of a jury is new territory for Zuckerberg, who took part in a landmark trial this week focused on whether social media platforms such as Instagram are addictive for children.
On Wednesday (18 February), Mark defended Meta against a 20-year-old woman's claims that the design of Meta's platforms left her addicted to social media and negatively impacted her mental health.
The plaintiff, known by initials KGM, originally filed lawsuits against Meta, YouTube, TikTok and Snapchat. TikTok and Snapchat settled with an undisclosed financial sum a just hours before the trial began on 27 January.
Overall, the trial is expected to last six weeks.
What has Mark Zuckerberg said in court?
KGM claims her mental health's negative decline can be traced back to when she began using Instagram at nine years old.
In the Los Angeles courtroom on Wednesday, KGM sat directly across from Zuckerberg as her lawyer Mark Lanier questioned Meta's boss on whether users under 13 are allowed to access Instagram.
Zuckerberg emphasised that under-13s are not permitted on the platform, but admitted there are a "meaningful number of people who lie about their age to use our services".
He added that he "always" regretted not making faster progress to identify users under 13, but claimed the company had reached the "right place over time".
Over the past two years, Meta has rolled out features for "teen accounts" on Instagram, including content filtering for users under 16 years of age.
Lanier presented various emails surrounding the use of Instagram and Meta's other age-restricted platforms by underage users.
An email from 2019 received by top executives of Meta, including Mark Zuckerberg, claimed the company had "unenforced" age limitations.
Meta's Head Global Affairs and former UK Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg said in an email it was "difficult to claim we're doing all we can".
Lanier also highlighted exchanges from 2018, where the organisation discussed successful retention of "tweens" on the platform. Zuckerberg claimed Lanier had taken the tween document out of context and said teens represented "less than 1%" of ad revenue for Meta.
He continued: "You are mischaracterising what I'm saying. I'm not surprised that people internally were studying this."
Do Meta employees think its platforms are addictive?
Much of the evidence is still yet to play out in court, but Meta has already attracted criticism over internal chat messages in which a researcher appeared to compare Instagram to a drug.
In his opening statement, the plaintiff’s attorney highlighted that a fellow employee replied: "I mean, all social media. We're basically pushers."
A Meta spokesperson told Politico that the plaintiff's allegations included "cherry-picked quotes and misinformed opinions in an attempt to present a deliberately misleading picture".
As KGM is an anonymous plaintiff, there has been no reporting on her personal statements in court.
Matthew Bergman, Founder of the Social Media Victims Law Center, who is also representing KGM, said before the trial that she will be able to explain "how, in so many ways, [social media] robbed her of her childhood and adolescence".
He also said KGM is "very typical of so many children in the United States" whose mental health have been negatively affected by social media.
'Problematic' or addiction?
Head of Instagram Adam Mosseri appeared separately in court on 11 February to defend the platform against KGM's claims.
He agreed on a broad point made by Lanier that Instagram should do everything within its power to help keep young people and other users safe on the platform.
However, when the attorney asked Adam what he thought of KGM's longest single-day use of Instagram – totalling 16 hours – he called it "problematic use," but refrained from calling it an addiction.
Adam also said he did not think it was possible to say how much Instagram use was too much: "It's important to differentiate between clinical addiction and problematic use."
What's happening outside the courtroom?
Over the past few weeks, parents and relatives of children who have taken own lives due to social media addiction have been gathering outside court to watch proceedings. A small number have been allowed seats in the courtroom.
Outside the US, a growing number of countries are moving to restrict social media use by young people, with Australia implementing a ban on social media accounts for under-16s last year.
Other countries, such as the UK, Denmark, France and Spain, may soon follow suit.
