Instagram Boss Dragged to Court as Addiction Case Worsens
Instagram boss Adam Mosseri has been drawn into a trial over alleged social media addiction among children at the Federal Court in Oakland, California, United States. Before the panel of judges, Mosseri admitted that safety features to limit screen time were very rarely used by teenage users before being activated by default.
The trial is part of a giant lawsuit filed by 29 US states against Instagram’s parent company, Meta Platforms. Meta is accused of deliberately designing Instagram and Facebook to make children addicted in order to reap profits.
During questioning by Jason Slothouber, a lawyer representing the State of Colorado, Mosseri admitted that the percentage of teenagers using the ‘Take a Break’ feature was in the single digits, or very low. Yet when launching the feature in December 2021, Mosseri had claimed that more than 90% of teenagers who activated it chose to keep it on. The feature works by giving users a nudge to close the app after a certain duration.
Meta only made ‘Take a Break’ a default setting for teen accounts in September 2024, nearly three years after it was first introduced. ‘Most teenagers did not want it,’ Mosseri said on the fourth day of the trial. ‘But we decided to continue with it anyway,’ he said.
Experts have touted this lawsuit as the biggest legal test in history regarding the impact of social media on the mental health of the younger generation. Four states — California, Colorado, Kentucky, and New Jersey — accuse Meta of deliberately designing platforms that captivate young users, triggering anxiety, depression, and even suicidal behaviour. In addition, 29 states accuse Meta of violating federal law by illegally collecting personal data of children under the age of 13.
Cumulatively, the states are seeking staggering civil penalties worth nearly US$200 billion (around Rp 3,543 trillion). Meta strongly denies the accusations. The company claims its internal research does not show a clear causal relationship between social media use and a decline in teenage well-being.
In court, Mosseri also dismissed accusations that he ordered the legal team to filter or destroy sensitive internal data so that Meta could avoid legal trouble. He said that following the scandal of leaked ‘Facebook Files’ documents by whistleblower Frances Haugen in 2021, Instagram did centralise sensitive research related to teenagers into one special team to ensure data quality. ‘I never encouraged my team to hide anything,’ Mosseri insisted.
However, testimony from Instagram’s Product Design Director, Francesco Fogu, revealed a different fact. Fogu admitted that his team had removed data from a leadership presentation slide in 2023 showing that teenage users were exposed to bullying, violence, and nudity content 1.5 times more than adult users.
The trial in Oakland is projected to last six weeks. US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers will determine the final decision regarding civil penalties and system overhauls on Instagram and Facebook.
Meta itself is facing mounting legal pressure over the impact of its products. In the Los Angeles case, a jury found Meta and Alphabet (Google) guilty of design negligence and ordered them to pay US$6 million in damages to a 20-year-old woman who had been addicted since childhood. In the New Mexico case, a judge ordered Meta to pay US$567 million for teenage mental health treatment after its platform was deemed a public nuisance.