By Bill Hetherman
City News Service
LOS ANGELES (CNS) – Testifying in the landmark trial of a lawsuit alleging addictive practices employed by social media platforms to hook young users, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said today that while preteens are barred from using the company’s services, some minors still break the rules to do so.
Meta — the parent company of Instagram and Facebook — and Google- owned YouTube are the remaining defendants in the Los Angeles Superior Court trial in which a woman who is now 20 years old and identified as K.G.M. contends her use of social media from an early age addicted her to the technology and exacerbated depression and suicidal thoughts.
Zuckerberg’s testimony on Wednesday came during the second week of the watershed case, in which a jury is being asked to determine whether child platform users are targeted to increase profits at the expense of their mental health. The appearance by Zuckerberg, who has previously testified before Congress about the issue of social media’s impact on children, marked the first time he has been questioned before a jury.
On the stand, Zuckerberg told jurors that minors under age 13 are not permitted to use the Meta platforms, but there are individuals who will do so anyway. He said the company removes users who are found to be underage. K.G.M. was under the age limit when she began using the products, and Zuckerberg suggested it is up to users to read the terms.
That drew a rebuke from a plaintiff’s attorney who questioned whether Meta actually expected young children to read the rules regarding the platform’s use.
Attorneys for K.G.M. contend that despite the platform’s prohibition of preteen users, as many as 4 million such children access Meta’s Instagram.
When asked by a plaintiff’s attorney if a firm should be taking advantage of vulnerable platform users, Zuckerberg said the companies should “try to help”’ the people who use their services.
He later took issue with the idea that social media is intentionally addictive or harmful, describing it as a tool that provides vital information and interaction, and as such, people are naturally inclined to use it more frequently.
The trial is being closely watched as a test case for hundreds of similar pending lawsuits. The cases all generally allege various damages from what attorneys call addictive social-media platforms powered by “complex algorithms designed to exploit human psychology.”
Some legal observers predict the trial’s outcome could influence future social-media platform regulation and accountability.
Meta is strongly contesting all allegations in K.G.M.’s lawsuit and maintains it is committed to the well-being of its young users.
As Zuckerberg arrived at the downtown Los Angeles courthouse on Wednesday morning, about a dozen parents who contend their children have been negatively affected by social media stood with locked hands outside the building.
Plaintiff’s attorney Mark Lanier said in his opening statement on Feb. 9 that K.G.M. started using YouTube at age 6 and Instagram at age 9, and had posted nearly 300 videos before she even reached high school.
But Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri testified two days later that just because someone binges on something, such as he did in watching a Netflix show late one night, that kind of attention to a subject is not tantamount to an addiction. He also said that profit comes with protecting minors and not in exploiting them.
Zuckerberg’s testimony is scheduled to be followed later in the trial by that of YouTube CEO Neil Mohan.
The plaintiff previously reached a settlement with Snapchat and TikTok.
“In recent years, there has been growing concern about the impact of digital technologies, particularly social media, on the mental health and well-being of adolescents,” one of the hundreds of L.A. lawsuits contends.
“Many researchers argue that defendants’ social media products facilitate cyberbullying, contribute to obesity and eating disorders, instigate sleep deprivation to achieve around-the-clock platform engagement, encourage children to negatively compare themselves to others, and develop a broad discontentment for life. They have been connected to depression, anxiety, self-harm, and ultimately suicidal ideation, suicide attempts, and completed suicide,” the suit continues.
According to her suit, brought in July 2023, K.G.M. began using social media at age 10. Her mother did not want her using it and tried using third-party software to prevent her daughter’s use, but the companies design their products in a manner that allows children to avoid parental consent — and K.G.M. did just that, the suit stated.
Prompted by the addictive design of the Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok products, and the constant notifications that Meta, Snapchat and TikTok began pushing to her 24 hours a day, K.G.M. developed a nonstop compulsion to engage with the products, the suit alleged.
She did not know that each company made programming decisions aimed at targeting K.G.M., the suit states. For example, Meta and Snap’s AI user recommendation and connection tools facilitated and created connections between minor plaintiff K.G.M. and complete strangers, including predatory adults and others she did not know in real life and would not have met but for the seemingly random connections these companies made, the suit further stated.
Meta’s and TikTok’s product designs also targeted K.G.M. with harmful and depressive content, urging K.G.M. to commit acts of self-harm, as well as harmful social comparison and body image, the suit stated.
“These are connections and content K.G.M. did not seek out or even want to see; instead, these are the types of harms defendants aimed at her in their efforts to prevent her from looking away at any cost,” the suit alleged.
At one point, K.G.M. allegedly suffered bullying and sextortion via Instagram, and she and her mother never could determine whether the abuser was someone who knew K.G.M. in real life or was a random stranger to whom Instagram connected her.
“In fact, it took K.G.M.’s friends and family spamming and asking other Instagram users to report the persons targeting minor K.G.M. for a two-week period before Meta did anything about the abuses, violation of terms and illegal conduct of which it, by then, had full knowledge,” the complaint states.
The more K.G.M. accessed the companies’ products, the worse her mental health became, the suit alleges.