Meta child safety trial puts Instagram and Facebook design under scrutiny
OAKLAND, Calif. — The Meta child safety trial opened Tuesday in federal court, putting the design of Instagram and Facebook at the center of a major legal fight over how social media platforms affect young users.
A coalition of 29 states is accusing Meta Platforms of designing its services to encourage children and teenagers to spend more time online, while allegedly minimizing or concealing concerns about the effects of those features. The states also allege that Meta collected personal information from children under 13 without the parental consent required under federal law.
The case is being heard in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California before Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers. An advisory jury is expected to hear the evidence, while the judge will ultimately decide the company’s liability.
The proceedings are expected to last roughly six to seven weeks. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and other senior executives are expected to testify during the trial, making the case one of the most closely watched legal challenges facing the company this year.
At the heart of the dispute is a relatively straightforward question with complicated consequences: when does an engaging social media product become a product that is unlawfully designed to keep children using it?
California Deputy Attorney General Megan O’Neill argued in her opening statement that Meta’s business model placed user engagement and revenue ahead of youth safety. She pointed to internal company communications and research that prosecutors say show Meta was aware of concerns surrounding young users and continued to pursue greater engagement.
The states’ case is not primarily about individual posts or videos uploaded by users. Instead, prosecutors are focusing on the architecture of the platforms themselves.
That distinction matters.
Features such as infinite scrolling, recommendation algorithms, notifications, photo filters and visible engagement indicators can be examined as elements of a product’s design rather than simply as pieces of content. The states argue that these mechanisms encouraged repeated and prolonged use among minors.
The legal strategy therefore attempts to move the dispute away from a traditional question of whether a company should be responsible for what users post and toward whether the company can be held responsible for how it builds the service.
Meta disputes that theory and says its platforms include protections intended to make them safer for teenagers. The company has pointed to tools such as privacy controls and reminders designed to encourage younger users to take breaks.
The case also touches on children’s online privacy. Under the federal Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, operators covered by the law generally must obtain verifiable parental consent before collecting personal information from children under 13. Children’s Online Privacy Protection Rule sets out those requirements and defines the federal framework governing children’s data online.
Meta’s handling of younger users’ information is therefore another important part of the trial, separate from the broader allegations concerning mental health and platform design. The states contend that the company did not adequately comply with those privacy obligations. Meta denies wrongdoing.
Internal Meta research becomes a central part of the case
The states are relying heavily on internal Meta documents to establish what company executives and researchers knew about young users and how those findings influenced product decisions.
During opening arguments, O’Neill highlighted internal material that prosecutors say demonstrates the company’s interest in increasing the amount of time teenagers spent on Instagram. One document discussed the company’s goal of increasing teen time on the platform, while another examined younger users and their potential long-term value to the business.
Those documents are likely to become a major battleground during the trial.
Internal research does not automatically establish that a company violated the law. But prosecutors are using the material to argue that Meta understood the behavior of young users and deliberately built products around retaining them.
The states say that approach created a conflict between two objectives: reducing potential harm to minors and maximizing the amount of time those same users remained active.
That conflict is particularly important because Meta operates at extraordinary scale. The company reported that its family of applications averaged 3.60 billion daily active people in June 2026. It also reported second-quarter revenue of $60.80 billion, up 28% from the same period a year earlier. Meta said its second-quarter results included $2.40 billion in charges related to legal proceedings.
Those numbers explain why the financial stakes in the litigation are unusually high.
State attorneys have presented calculations suggesting that the maximum potential penalties could reach approximately $1.4 trillion. That figure has been challenged by Meta and is not the amount the states have formally asked the court to award.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta has said the states are not pursuing a predetermined dollar figure. Instead, he has emphasized potential changes to Meta’s products and business practices.
That distinction could become important as the case develops. A verdict involving a very large financial penalty would attract attention, but restrictions on how Meta designs and operates Instagram and Facebook could have broader implications for the technology industry.
The case also follows several other legal defeats for Meta involving youth safety.
Earlier this year, a California jury found Meta and Google liable in a case brought by a young woman who said her mental health had been affected by compulsive social media use beginning in childhood. In another case in New Mexico, a jury found Meta liable over allegations involving the protection of young users, leading to substantial financial penalties and court-ordered safety measures.
Meta has indicated that it will challenge adverse rulings. The company argues that the states’ allegations do not establish that its products caused the harms being claimed and maintains that it has introduced significant protections for teenagers.
The company’s defense is also expected to address the broader social media environment. Meta is not the only technology company facing lawsuits over youth mental health, addictive design or children’s safety. Similar litigation has expanded across the United States, creating a legal landscape in which courts are being asked to determine where responsibility lies between technology companies, users, parents and regulators.
The testimony of former Meta employees could add another layer to that dispute.
One expected witness is Arturo Béjar, a former senior Meta engineer who previously raised concerns about how the company handled reports of negative experiences involving young users. In 2023, Béjar testified before the U.S. Senate about his experience working on safety issues at Meta and his concerns about the company’s response.
His testimony could give prosecutors an opportunity to connect internal discussions with the company’s public statements about youth safety.
The ruling could affect how social media platforms are built
The Meta child safety trial is significant beyond the question of whether Meta violated specific laws. The proceedings could influence how regulators and courts evaluate the design of social media products used by minors.
For years, technology companies have generally argued that the speech and content posted by users should not make the platforms themselves legally responsible for resulting harm. Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act has played an important role in that debate.
The states are pursuing a different path.
Their argument is that a company can be responsible for the consequences of its own product decisions even when those decisions concern features rather than individual pieces of user-generated content.
That approach could have implications for the entire technology sector.
If courts accept a stronger legal distinction between user content and platform design, companies could face greater scrutiny over recommendation systems, notifications, default settings, age verification and other mechanisms that influence how users interact with their services.
Age verification is already becoming a significant policy issue. In February, the Federal Trade Commission issued a policy statement addressing certain uses of age-verification technology under COPPA. The agency said operators could collect limited information to determine a user’s age without first obtaining parental consent in specified circumstances, provided that the information is not used for other purposes and is deleted promptly.
That illustrates the growing pressure on technology companies to distinguish between adult and child users.
The difficulty is that identifying a user’s age online is not simple. A system can create privacy concerns of its own, particularly if platforms require people to submit identification, facial information or other sensitive data.
For Meta, the trial therefore comes at a time when the basic rules surrounding children’s access to social media are already shifting.
The states are asking the court to consider several possible remedies, including restrictions on platform features and changes to how Meta handles younger users. Some proposed measures could affect recommendation systems, infinite scrolling and the use of children’s data in algorithms.
Meta, meanwhile, is expected to argue that such measures would go too far and that the states have not demonstrated a sufficient legal basis for imposing them.
The financial consequences could also be substantial. Meta’s advertising business depends heavily on the scale and engagement of its platforms, meaning that restrictions affecting how users discover content or how long they remain active could have commercial consequences.
The company reported that advertising impressions across its family of applications increased 14% year over year during the second quarter, while average advertising prices increased 12%.
That makes the dispute over engagement more than a theoretical question.
The trial is also unfolding against a wider political debate about children’s access to social media. States across the country have pursued different approaches, including age restrictions, parental consent requirements and limits on certain platform features.
The legal challenge facing Meta could help determine how far those efforts can go under existing federal and state law.
For now, the courtroom fight remains focused on evidence about Meta’s decisions, its treatment of younger users and the legal obligations that apply to its platforms. The judge is expected to weigh testimony from company executives, former employees, researchers and state officials as the case moves through the coming weeks.
The outcome could determine not only whether Meta faces financial penalties and additional requirements, but also how future lawsuits define the responsibility of social media companies when product design itself becomes the central issue.
