For the first time, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified before a jury on Wednesday over claims that Instagram and other social media platforms negatively impact kids’ mental health.
Kaley, a 20-year-old woman, claims that Instagram and Google’s YouTube were purposefully made to be addicted, hooking her at the age of elementary school and resulting in body dysmorphia, anxiety, and sadness.
Her lawsuit’s verdict may have an impact on the hundreds of other cases filed by families who claim social media has caused harm or even death to their own children. For its part, Meta disputes the charges and claims to have put in place a number of safeguards to protect young users.
Questions about Meta’s knowledge of potential risks to youth and whether it took adequate steps to reduce them constituted the main focus of the evidence. According to Zuckerberg, his goal is to create a product with long-term appeal rather than one that makes people feel self-conscious and hooks them in the short term.
The amount of time spent on Instagram
One of the main points of contention Wednesday was the lawsuit’s claim that Meta created its platforms to keep users browsing and boost its revenue. According to Zuckerberg, Meta has shifted its focus from time-specific goals for Instagram to “utility and value.”
Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri claimed that the short-form video Reels feature had “driven time to all-time highs” and that his personal “stretch goal was to get on track to pass TikTok in terms of time spent,” according to an internal memo presented by Kaley’s attorney Mark Lanier.
Zuckerberg stated that time spent served as a stand-in for gauging Instagram’s performance in comparison to rivals, saying, “The way I read this, we try to increase the value of our services, but also trying to measure progress against competitors like TikTok.”
Lanier presented a 2022 Instagram “milestones” document, which predicted that the average amount of time spent on the app would increase from 40 minutes in 2023 to 46 minutes in 2026.
“This is something we expect to see if we do good work,” he stated.
Instagram says it requires users to be at least 13 years old to create an account — a policy Zuckerberg reiterated on the stand.
However, according to a 2015 internal report, over 4 million Instagram users were under the age of 13, which accounted for “30% of all 10-12 year olds in the US.”
According to Lanier, Kaley started using Instagram when she was nine years old. Instagram only requested users to confirm they were older than 13 before requesting a date of birth from new users in December 2019. In August 2021,
Instagram began requesting users who had not previously provided their birthdate. This indicates that when Kaley joined the platform, no questions about her age were asked. Additionally, Lanier displayed an internal document that stated, “We must bring them in as tweens if we want to win big with teens.”
Lanier previously stated that Kaley, who is now 20 years old, would not be present for a large portion of the trial because she struggles in crowds and has social anxiety. (Her testimony is anticipated later.)
Meta has maintained that Kaley’s mental health issues were a result of her challenging upbringing rather than its effects. However, Lanier questioned Zuckerberg on Wednesday about whether a corporation should “prey upon” those from challenging backgrounds or those who are “less fortunate in educational opportunities,” implying that Kaley’s upbringing made it even more crucial that Meta protect vulnerable users. Zuckerberg responded, “I believe a reasonable company should try to help the people who use its services.”
Zuckerberg claimed that after carefully considering privacy concerns, the corporation finally decided on the best policy for confirming users’ ages.
He continued by saying that minors frequently lack official identification documents or other means of verification, making it difficult for Meta and many other social media firms to reliably verify the ages of underage members.
Meta currently claims that it use AI to determine users’ ages and implement its adolescent safety protocols. Additionally, he calculated that fewer than 1% of Instagram’s revenue comes from teenagers. “Advertisers don’t value teens because most of them don’t have disposable income,” he stated.
(For years, parents and advocates have argued that Meta targeted young users with the hope that they would become long-term users rather than for their immediate purchasing power.)
Meta lawyer Paul Schmidt on Wednesday presented A 2018 communication from Zuckerberg to Apple CEO Tim Cook. In which he stated his intention to make sure “technology improves people’s wellbeing,”
Parents gather to watch Zuckerberg, they waited for Zuckerberg to appear outside the courthouse Wednesday morning, almost a dozen parents who claim their children were hurt or killed as a result of social media came together and joined hands.
