Meta faces legal challenge for addictive features

Meta, the company that runs Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, has been accused of intentionally producing addictive products for children in a trial which began on Tuesday.

Lawyers claim that millions of children aged 11 and 12 were using the companies platform Instagram, which has a minimum age of 13, and that Meta “did little to keep them off”. Meta’s legal team, however, said that only 100,000 underage users were found, and argued that social media addiction did not exist.

The trial began in 2023 with a lawsuit filed by 29 US states, claiming that Meta has violated federal and state child safety laws. One state attorney general said that the case was “the largest consumer protection lawsuit in American history”. This trial comes after a judge in New Mexico found Meta to be a “public nuisance” earlier this year. That judgement came with a $567 million fine and demands to make changes to the platform.

In their opening arguments, the lead attorney for California produced internal research from Meta that found “product features designed to increase time spent are inherently at odds with well-being and take away from people's ability to focus on activity that adds value to their lives”. Despite this, Meta continued to “assure the public that its platforms were safe for kids”. She argued that “Meta said it put safety over profits, but hid the reality that, time and again, when it came to make a decision, profits won.”

If found guilty, Meta could face fines up to an estimated $1 trillion. The states are also asking for changes to be made to Facebook and Instagram, such as removing ‘infinite scroll’ and removing like counts. They are demanding parental verification for teenage users, removal of image filters and autoplay of videos, and the end to disappearing posts like Instagram’s Stories. Their aim is to get Meta to change its “dopamine-manipulating recommendation algorithms”.

The attorney general for Kentucky said: “We'll show a jury that Meta concealed what it knew about the harm its products cause young people because looking away was more profitable”.