Arya News - Meta, parent company of Instagram and Facebook, is on trial over claims it sought to hook young users on its platforms despite mental health concerns.
The top executive at Instagram has admitted that few teenagers have used a feature meant to counter addiction before it was turned on by default, as hearings in a landmark trial against its parent company, Meta , continue in the United States.
Adam Mosseri testified on Tuesday as Meta’s trial – over accusations that it designed its platforms, including Facebook, to be addictive to young people – entered its second week.
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“Most teens didn’t want it,” Mosseri said. “We decided to push forward with it anyway.”
Mosseri is a central witness in the lawsuit brought by 29 US states, in what experts call the biggest legal test yet of social media’s effects on young users.
Four of the states – California, Colorado, Kentucky and New Jersey – have accused Meta of designing the platforms to hook young users, driving anxiety, depression and even suicide, while misleading consumers about the platforms’ safety.
All 29 states say Meta violated US federal law by improperly collecting and employing the personal data of children under 13 while they used its platforms.
The states are seeking approximately $200bn in damages from Meta.
‘Designed to fail’
Meta has rejected accusations that it sought to addict children, saying its research showed no clear link between adolescents’ social media use and a lack of wellbeing.
Under questioning from Jason Slothouber, a lawyer for Colorado, Mosseri acknowledged that the percentage of teenagers using Take a Break was in the low single digits before Instagram made it the default.
Take a Break encourages teenage users to close the app after a certain amount of time. Mosseri had estimated in a December 2021 blog post that more than 90 percent of teenagers who turned the feature on kept it on.
That number, however, referred to the number of those who had turned on the feature.
When asked whether Meta had disclosed its low adoption, which had reached only 1 or 2 percent of accounts, Mosseri admitted the company had not, but said the safety features were later turned on by default in Teen Accounts, which launched in 2024 and have parental controls.
Former Meta employees have said that features such as Take a Break and Quiet Mode were difficult to find and not widely used, casting doubt on whether they represented a serious effort by the company to limit screen time for young users .
“In my experience, Take a Break is a feature that’s designed to fail,” Arturo Bejar, a former Meta engineering director, testified last week.
George Volichenko, a data scientist who worked on safety features at Instagram in 2022 and 2023, likewise stated on Monday that adoption rates of such features were “very low” and that company leadership had declined to approve turning on Quiet Mode by default for young teenagers.
He added that turning on such features automatically would have had a “notable negative impact” on user engagement.
The trial could last six weeks.
Jurors are expected to issue an advisory verdict. US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers will decide whether Meta is liable and, if so, determine any civil penalties and changes to Facebook and Instagram.