Zuckerberg grilled in court over social media harms on teens | TechCrunch

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified in court on Wednesday in a landmark trial aiming to determine if the tech giant’s social media applications are addictive and harmful to teens and kids. The trial, taking place in LA Superior Court, already revealed that Meta’s own research indicated that parental supervision couldn’t prevent teens from compulsive use of social media, and teens who faced traumatic life experiences were even more inclined to overuse social media.

Lawyers for the plaintiff, a 20-year-old who goes by her initials KGM, questioned Zuckerberg this week about whether Instagram employees were given goals to increase daily app usage. The Meta CEO had said during an earlier congressional hearing that this was not the case, the AP noted, but a 2015 email chain presented as evidence in the trial showed Zuckerberg pushing to increase users’ time spent in app by 12%.

Zuckerberg was also asked about Instagram’s use of beauty filters, which Meta’s own experts said should be banned when it comes to teens, as well as internal documents with Meta’s estimates of how many children under the age of 13 were on the platform. One Meta document from 2018 statedthat, as of 2015,4 million children under 13 had Instagram accounts, including roughly 30% of children aged 10-12 in the U.S., for instance.

Here, Zuckerberg pushed back, saying age verification was difficult and smartphone makers like Apple could be more helpful on this front. (Apple recently rolled out its own age assurance tools for developers, as a result of the increasing push to regulate apps like Facebook and Instagram in the U.S., where many states have now created or are developing their own social media laws.)

Reports from the courtroom noted Zuckerberg largely stuck to the company’s talking points during his testimony, sometimes claiming the plaintiff’s lawyers were taking things out of context or mischaracterizing what documents said.

Plaintiff KGM (who also goes by her first name Kaley) sued four social media companies over what she alleges is the harmful and addictive nature of their platforms. TikTok and Snap settled before the trial began, with YouTube and Meta defending their apps’ success.

During the trial, lawyers for Meta have pointed to Kaley’s unhappy childhood as leading to her mental health concerns, not the social apps themselves. The results of this trial by jury could lead to big tech reforms, prompt new laws and regulations, and lead to a settlement with victims, if the tech companies are found to be at fault.