Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg repeatedly insisted that social media platforms Instagram and Facebook do not allow children under the age of 13 on their platforms during a landmark trial on youth social media addiction. This has been his response to evidence suggesting that this age group is the platform’s key demographic.
Mark Lanier, the lawyer for the woman suing Instagram and Google’s YouTube for harming her mental health during her childhood, confronted Zuckerberg with internal Meta documents that contradicted his statement to Congress in 2024 that users under 13 are not allowed.
Teens Make Less Than 1% Of Revenue
This case involves a California woman who alleges that these companies have been seeking profit by hooking kids onto their services despite knowing that social media has negative impacts on children’s mental health.
Meta faces potential damages at the jury trial in Los Angeles, which is part of a wave of litigation against social media platforms in the U.S., many of which will be going to trial.
Zuckerberg claimed that it is difficult for app developers to verify age and passed the responsibility onto mobile device companies. He testified that teens on Instagram are estimated to make up less than 1% of the revenue.
Zuckerberg’s Goals To Increase App Usage Time
Zuckerberg also insists that he did not give his teams the goal of maximising time spent on the Instagram app when confronted about his statement to Congress in 2021. Lanier provided emails from 2014 and 2015 to the judges, in which Zuckerberg laid out aims to increase app usage time by double-digit percentage points. Zuckerberg responded by saying that while that may have been an initial goal, Meta has since changed its approach.
Jurors were presented with a document from 2022 that listed “milestones” for Instagram in the coming years, which included incrementally increasing the time that users spend on the app from 40 minutes in 2023 to 46 minutes in 2026.
Zuckerberg said the milestones are not “goals”, rather a “gut check” for senior management about how the company is doing.
Matthew Bergman, a lawyer representing other parents who claim social media led to their children’s deaths, told reporters that he hopes the cost of litigation will force change in the industry.
“We know that simply because we have achieved this milestone, justice has been done,” he said of Zuckerberg’s testimony and the trial.
(With inputs from Reuters)
