Meta Boss Mark Zuckerberg Takes the Stand in Social Media Addiction Trial

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is scheduled to appear before a Los Angeles jury on Wednesday in a landmark lawsuit alleging that social media platforms were deliberately designed to addict young users and harm their mental health.

NBC reports that the highly anticipated testimony of Zuckerberg marks a critical moment in a trial that could reshape the legal landscape for Silicon Valley companies. Attorneys representing families are expected to question Zuckerberg intensively about whether Instagram and other Meta platforms were intentionally engineered as what they describe as “digital casinos” designed to exploit vulnerabilities in adolescent brains.

The case centers on a fundamental question with potentially far-reaching implications for the technology industry: whether social media platforms constitute defective products that were specifically created to manipulate young people’s psychology. This determination could affect how tech companies design and operate their services going forward.

The plaintiff at the heart of the lawsuit is a 20-year-old California woman identified in legal documents only as KGM or Kaley. According to her account, she began using YouTube compulsively at age six and started scrolling through Instagram around age nine. Kaley maintains that her use of these platforms exacerbated her depression and suicidal thoughts. She is expected to provide detailed testimony later in the trial.

Legal representatives for the families have pointed to internal company documents that allegedly demonstrate a deliberate focus on making social media applications difficult for users to stop using. These documents reportedly highlight features such as infinite scroll, auto-play functions, likes, beauty filters, and push notifications as tools to increase engagement. During opening statements, attorney Mark Lanier argued that “These companies built machines designed to addict the brains of children. And they did it on purpose.”

Defense attorneys for the tech giant have contested these claims, arguing that correlation does not equal causation. They maintain that experiencing mental health challenges after using a platform does not automatically mean the platform caused those problems. The defense contends that the social media industry has become an unfair scapegoat for complex emotional issues affecting children that may have multiple underlying causes.

The stakes in this trial extend far beyond the individual case. Legal experts consider this a test case that could influence the outcome of approximately 1,600 other pending social media addiction lawsuits that have been consolidated from parents and school districts across the country. The trial is being held in state court, where the jury requires a three-fourths majority — meaning nine out of 12 jurors — to reach a verdict for either side.

Adding to Meta’s legal challenges, the company is simultaneously facing a separate consumer protection trial in New Mexico. The state’s attorney general has accused the tech giant of failing to prevent child sexual exploitation on its platforms. It remains uncertain whether Zuckerberg will testify in that proceeding.

Originally, KGM’s lawsuit named Meta, Google, TikTok, and Snap as defendants, accusing all four companies of employing tactics similar to those used by Big Tobacco in previous decades to target and addict young people while disregarding internal research showing potential harm to teenagers. Both TikTok and Snap reached settlements before the trial began, leaving Meta and Google as the remaining defendants.

The courtroom has been filled throughout the proceedings with grieving parents holding framed photographs of their children who died after experiencing harm connected to social media use. Julianna Arnold, whose 17-year-old daughter died after being contacted by a predator she encountered on social media, has been among those attending the trial. Arnold and other parents are hoping for a verdict against the technology companies.

“We lost our kids, and there’s nothing we can do about that. But what we can do is inform other parents and families about these harms and that these platforms are dangerous and that we need to put guardrails on these companies,” Arnold stated. “And they cannot just do whatever they want when they want, how they want. And I want parents to know that these are not safe platforms for their children.”