Shannon Heacock holds a photograph of her son as family members of young people who allegedly died from the impacts of social media demonstrate outside the Ronald V. Dellums Federal Building & United States Courthouse in Oakland, California, on August 18, 2026 (AFP photo)
Meta deliberately designed Instagram and Facebook to keep children hooked and concealed the risks from the public, lawyers representing 29 U.S. states told a federal jury as a trial against the technology company opened in California.
California, Colorado, Kentucky and New Jersey are leading the proceedings in Oakland.
The states say potential penalties could reach about $200 billion and are also seeking changes to Meta’s platforms to protect young users.
California Deputy Attorney General Megan O’Neill said Meta’s business model was intended to “hook the users, hold them for as long as they can, harvest their data, and then hide the truth from the public.”
“Meta exploited how kids’ brains work,” she told jurors.
The states accuse Meta of misleading the public about the risks its platforms posed to minors, designing features to prolong children’s use and making screen-time controls easy to bypass.
They also allege the company collected data from children under 13 without parental consent, in violation of federal privacy law.
Meta has denied the allegations, saying it has worked with parents, experts and law enforcement to develop safeguards for children.
Company lawyer Paul Schmidt acknowledged that some users had negative experiences but said Meta had “tried to come up with tools to help them.”
Former Meta engineering director Arturo Bejar testified that during Facebook’s early years, products were released rapidly and safety or security was often “an afterthought.”
The case is the first federal trial in a broader series of lawsuits accusing social media companies, including TikTok, Snap and YouTube, of harming young users.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Instagram head Adam Mosseri are among the witnesses expected to testify.
The trial is expected to last six to eight weeks.
