Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg acknowledged on Wednesday that the company moved too slowly in developing effective ways to detect underage users on Instagram, as he endured sharp questioning in a major California trial accusing social media platforms of intentionally designing features to addict young people and harm their mental well-being.
Responding to internal complaints that insufficient steps had been taken to confirm whether children under 13 were accessing the platform, the 41-year-old leader of Meta, which also controls Facebook and WhatsApp, pointed out that meaningful improvements have since been implemented.
But “I always wish that we could have gotten there sooner,” he added.
Zuckerberg emerged as the most closely watched witness in this high-stakes Los Angeles courtroom proceeding, the opening case in a growing wave of lawsuits brought by American families against prominent social media companies. For the first time, the multibillionaire founder faced a jury directly under oath to address concerns about the safety of his globally dominant platforms.
An AFP journalist present in the courtroom observed that Zuckerberg initially appeared restrained and measured. As questioning intensified, however, he became noticeably more expressive, displaying irritation through head shakes and hand gestures while facing the 12 jurors.
The jurors listened to increasingly pointed exchanges as plaintiff attorney Mark Lanier challenged Zuckerberg on the company’s age-verification practices and the core decision-making principles guiding Meta’s vast social media operations.
When questioned by his own legal team, Zuckerberg appeared more at ease. He characterized extended time spent on the app as a “side effect” of delivering a positive user experience rather than a deliberate objective, frequently turning toward the jury to underscore his explanations.
He strongly advocated shifting age-verification responsibility to Apple and Google, whose operating systems power the majority of smartphones worldwide. Zuckerberg argued that device-level checks would be far more consistent and practical than requiring each individual app to implement its own system.
“Doing it at the level of the phone is just a lot clearer than having every single app out there have to do this separately,” Zuckerberg said.
“It would be pretty easy for them.”
Throughout his testimony, Zuckerberg confronted a series of internal company emails presented by the plaintiff’s side. These included warnings from colleagues that existing age-verification measures were inadequate, alongside documents indicating that boosting time spent on Instagram had long been a central company priority.
The trial, expected to continue until late March, will determine whether Meta and Google-owned YouTube hold responsibility for the mental health difficulties experienced by plaintiff Kaley G.M., a 20-year-old California resident who has been an intensive social media user since early childhood. Kaley began using YouTube at age six, Instagram at nine, and later added TikTok and Snapchat.
Instagram prohibits users under 13, yet Lanier highlighted how easily Kaley was able to create an account on the platform.
‘Right Place Now’
Zuckerberg was presented with an internal record estimating that Instagram had four million users under 13 in 2015, the year Kaley joined, and that 30 percent of U.S. children aged 10 to 12, often referred to as “tweens,” were active on the app at that time.
He responded that “we’re in the right place now” regarding age verification standards.
Lanier argued that young users like Kaley were exposed to Meta’s strategies for increasing engagement time on its highly popular apps, despite Zuckerberg’s previous sworn testimony before the U.S. Congress denying such objectives.
When shown emails revealing past internal targets for usage duration, Zuckerberg conceded that “we used to have goals around time,” but insisted the overriding aim had always been to “build useful services” that help people connect.
The jury also heard a former email from Nick Clegg, Meta’s one-time head of public policy, stating “the fact that we say we don’t allow under-13s on our platform, yet have no way of enforcing it, is just indefensible.”
This case, along with others expected to follow, seeks to determine whether Meta and Google intentionally built their platforms in ways that promote compulsive usage among minors, ultimately damaging mental health.
The outcome could help establish legal standards for addressing thousands of pending lawsuits that attribute a surge in youth depression, anxiety, eating disorders, and suicides to social media use.
TikTok and Snapchat, originally named in the suit alongside Meta and YouTube, reached confidential settlements with the plaintiff prior to the trial’s start.
