Meta Rejects Claims It Designed Instagram and Facebook to Hook Children
Meta has rejected accusations that it deliberately designed Instagram and Facebook to keep children compulsively engaged, as a landmark federal trial over youth safety moved from years of legal filings into opening arguments and witness testimony in California.
The case, being heard in Oakland, brings together claims from a bipartisan coalition of 29 U.S. states. California, Colorado, Kentucky and New Jersey are leading the state consumer-protection claims, while all 29 states accuse Meta of improperly collecting and using personal data belonging to children under 13.
In opening arguments on August 18, California Deputy Attorney General Megan O’Neill alleged that Meta researched how young people's developing brains respond to rewards and social feedback and then designed products to increase engagement. The states say features including infinite scroll, likes and notifications encouraged excessive use while Meta publicly downplayed risks. These remain allegations being tested at trial.
Meta denied that account.
Company lawyer Paul Schmidt told the court that Meta did not set out to make Facebook or Instagram dangerous and argued that research does not establish a simple causal relationship between social-media use and poor adolescent wellbeing. Meta intends to point to years of safety work as evidence that the company has been trying to reduce risks rather than deliberately create them.
The states' first witness, former Meta engineering director Arturo Béjar, then put the company's internal safety culture under scrutiny.
Béjar testified that safety concerns were sometimes weakened as products moved through development. Discussing efforts to limit eating-disorder content, he said engineers had proposed stronger solutions but that those proposals were substantially reduced during internal review. He also testified that safety was not always incorporated at the beginning of new products such as Reels.
Meta disputes Béjar's wider characterisation of its safety practices.
