Meta hooked children on Facebook and Instagram, US court hears, as a landmark Meta child safety trial opened this week with claims that could reshape how social media platforms operate for young users nationwide.
A federal courtroom in Oakland, California became the stage this week for what many legal observers are calling social media’s version of the tobacco industry’s reckoning decades ago. A bipartisan coalition of 29 US states is accusing Meta Platforms of deliberately designing Facebook and Instagram to addict children and teenagers, concealing what the company knew about the psychological harm those products could cause, and misleading the public about platform safety for years. The trial, which began with opening statements on August 18 before US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, is expected to run six to eight weeks and represents the biggest legal test yet of how social media companies design products for young users.
California Deputy Attorney General Megan O’Neill set the tone in her opening remarks, telling the eight person jury that Meta’s business model can be reduced to four steps: hook the users, hold them for as long as possible, harvest their data, then hide the truth from the public. It’s a blunt framing, and one that lawyers for the states have leaned into throughout the proceedings, repeatedly drawing comparisons between Meta’s alleged conduct and the tobacco industry’s decades long effort to obscure the health risks of smoking while marketing cigarettes to younger and younger audiences. California, Colorado, Kentucky and New Jersey are leading the case on behalf of the broader coalition, which is seeking financial penalties that could reach roughly 200 billion dollars along with court ordered changes to how Meta operates Facebook and Instagram going forward.
The core allegations center on design choices that plaintiffs argue were engineered specifically to maximize engagement among young users regardless of the cost to their mental health. Court filings and opening arguments have pointed to features like infinite scrolling, algorithmic recommendation systems, push notifications and the like button itself as tools that states say Meta calibrated to exploit adolescent psychology. Attorneys have also alleged that Meta knew millions of children under 13, the minimum age required to hold an account on its platforms, were actually using Instagram and did comparatively little to remove them. Court filings from the broader body of litigation against Meta have cited internal company estimates suggesting roughly 4 million Instagram users were under 13, along with internal tracking data on usage patterns among 11 and 12 year olds gathered through the company’s own age estimation systems.
Meta has firmly rejected the allegations. The company maintains it has invested heavily in tools designed to protect younger users, including parental controls, screen time limits and age verification systems, and argues that the states are mischaracterizing legitimate product design decisions as evidence of intentional harm. Meta’s legal team has framed the case as an attempt by state governments to regulate through litigation what Congress has so far declined to address through legislation, a criticism that echoes broader industry pushback against the wave of lawsuits targeting social media companies over youth mental health outcomes.
This Oakland trial doesn’t exist in isolation. It’s part of a much larger wave of litigation that has been building against Meta and its peers for years. Meta, along with Snap, TikTok owner ByteDance and YouTube owner Alphabet, currently faces thousands of lawsuits filed by states, school districts, municipalities and individual families alleging that their platforms caused or contributed to harm among young users. Some of these cases have already gone to trial and offered a preview of what’s likely to unfold in Oakland. In February, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified for the first time before a jury in a Los Angeles case centered on a young woman who began using Instagram at age nine and later developed depression, anxiety and suicidal thoughts that she attributes to her platform use. During that testimony, Zuckerberg repeatedly denied that Instagram was designed to target children, even as he was confronted with internal Meta documents and pressed over his 2024 congressional testimony asserting that users under 13 were not permitted on the platform. A related trial in New Mexico earlier this year focused specifically on allegations that Meta failed to protect children from sexual exploitation on its platforms, with the state’s attorney general arguing that the company misrepresented platform safety while profiting from continued youth engagement.
The scale of what’s at stake in the Oakland case is difficult to overstate given the size of Meta’s platforms. The company reported that its family of apps, which includes Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp, averaged 3.60 billion daily active users in June 2026. Instagram alone said in September 2025 that it had surpassed 3 billion monthly active users. Meta has stopped disclosing individual usage figures for Facebook specifically, but given those combined numbers, even incremental changes to how the platforms operate for younger users would touch an enormous global population. That scale is part of why legal experts have described the trial’s implications as potentially reshaping product design across the entire social media industry, not just at Meta.
Notably, jurors in the Oakland trial are expected to return an advisory verdict rather than a binding one, with Judge Gonzalez Rogers retaining ultimate authority over any findings and remedies. That structure doesn’t diminish the trial’s significance. A jury finding against Meta, even in an advisory capacity, would carry enormous symbolic and legal weight heading into the thousands of related cases still working through courts across the country, and could influence settlement negotiations in parallel litigation. Parents of children whose deaths have been linked to social media use gathered outside the Oakland courthouse ahead of opening arguments, underscoring the emotional stakes that extend well beyond the courtroom’s legal arguments about product design and corporate disclosure.
For Meta, the financial exposure is significant but arguably secondary to the reputational and regulatory stakes. A adverse verdict, even an advisory one, would add momentum to legislative efforts in Congress and state legislatures aimed at imposing stricter age verification and design requirements on social media platforms, efforts that have so far struggled to gain traction against industry lobbying and First Amendment concerns. It would also embolden the broader wave of pending litigation, potentially pushing Meta and other platforms toward settlements rather than risking similar public trials in front of juries increasingly willing to hear detailed evidence about internal company research on youth mental health.
As the Oakland trial unfolds over the coming weeks, testimony from current and former Meta employees, outside researchers and child psychology experts is expected to dig deeper into what the company knew internally about the effects of its products on young users, and when. Whether that evidence proves sufficient to convince the jury remains to be seen, but the trial has already cemented itself as a defining moment in the broader reckoning over how social media companies build and market products to the youngest and most vulnerable segment of their user base. For continued coverage of the legal battles reshaping the social media industry, visit Techchora’s technology policy section, and case filings and updates are available through the US District Court for the Northern District of California.
If this topic brings up difficult feelings, especially around a young person’s social media use or mental health, it can help to talk with a counselor or trusted professional.
