Zuckerberg Confronted with Internal Emails Proving Meta Made Teens the “Top Priority”

“This case is about two of the richest corporations who have engineered addiction in children’s brains,” Lanier said in his opening statement on February 9. “The swipe, for a child, like Kaley, this motion is a handle of a slot machine. But every time she swipes, it’s not for money, but for mental stimulation.”

The outcome of the present trial will likely set a precedent for thousands of similar lawsuits, with a study by the Pew Research Center from December 2025 noting that 36% of teens use one of five platforms, YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat and Facebook, “almost constantly”.

The case has also drawn comparisons with the war against Big Tobacco in the 1980s, which had been accused of downplaying risks about cigarette smoking. In 1988, the lobby reached an agreement with 48 states to cease underage marketing, and stricter regulations against smoking were subsequently enacted.

A ban on social media use by children under 16 became effective in Australia in December, with Denmark, France, Greece and other nations set to follow suit. The Economic Survey of India 2025-26 has called for age-based limits for social media usage by children, with at least two states, Andhra Pradesh and Goa, deliberating on such legislation.

Hostile design vs platform use

The present case is the first in a flurry of lawsuits filed by teenagers, school districts and states, claiming that platforms like Meta-owned Instagram and YouTube were designed to encourage excessive use by millions of young Americans.

Twenty-year-old KGM started using YouTube when she was six, and Instagram at nine. She has claimed that her addiction to social media led to anxiety, depression and body dysmorphia. The plaintiffs have argued that social media should be identified as a product and thus its design and other components must be held to product liability standards.

However, social media companies have long claimed protection for user content, citing Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, a 1996 law. They maintain that features like age verification and parental controls are content-based, and thus, they are not liable for minors being exposed to harm.

The American Psychiatric Association’s diagnostic manual for mental disorders does not characterise excessive social media use as an addiction, defining it instead as “problematic and compulsive use” and “an obsessive need to check and update” platforms.

As The Indian Express has previously explained, the current lawsuit presents a crucial distinction, with the plaintiffs making the case against hostile platform design, not harmful user content.

YouTube has also been named as a defendant in the lawsuit. Snapchat and TikTok, who had also been named in the current lawsuit, privately settled with the petitioner in the LA case ahead of the trial. The terms of the settlement are not currently known.

Meta on the stand

At a US Senate hearing in 2024, Zuckerberg tendered a public apology to families affected by online child abuse and assured that Meta would continue to address child safety concerns. He was visibly less conciliatory on Wednesday, keeping his answers brief while reiterating that the company had acted to protect its young users.

In January, Meta said that the cases cherry-pick statements by top executives from its internal documents, and the current lawsuit “oversimplifies” the problem. In his first appearance before a jury, he echoed this stance and claimed that lawyers were “mischaracterising” the company’s internal communications, which were presented as evidence in the present lawsuit. He maintains that Instagram, named in the present lawsuit, is a “valuable service” and that “people will want to use it more.”

In the present case, Meta has also disputed its role in KGM’s mental health struggles and said that a variety of factors may be responsible. Last week, Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri defended his company’s actions in court. He disagreed that people can be clinically addicted to social media, and said that spending 16 hours daily on the platform was “problematic”, not a sign of addiction.

Internal documents under review

Lanier repeatedly challenged Zuckerberg’s assertion that the company was “doing all it can” by presenting internal emails and research featuring the CEO and several employees discussing Instagram and Facebook usage by teenagers.

The lawyer flagged Instagram’s push to encourage app use by children under 13, with a 2018 email discussing the successful retention of said “tweens” on the platform. He also charged Zuckerberg with efforts to increase teen usage of the platform, with emails discussing ways to increase “teen usage”. Lanier cited a 2015 email that estimated four million children under 13 were using the app.

In a 2015 email, Zuckerberg declared a 12% increase in time spent on the app, and that the “teen trend be reversed.” A separate 2017 email read: “Mark has decided the top priority for the company is teens”.

Zuckerberg expressed regret for not acting faster to identify users under 13, but said that this was “difficult to determine” because of the number of people who lie about their age. He said he believed that the company had reached the “right place over time”. He said that he was not surprised that the tween use was a subject of interest internally, and said Meta had had “various discussions” about building child-friendly versions of their apps.

On time use, he said that he had given his executives goals to increase time spent “at an earlier point in the company,” but claimed it no longer operated that way. He also referenced Instagram tools such as daily use limits, a metric Lanier ruled ineffective, citing an internal Meta document which said that only 1.1% of teen users used the daily use limit.

In response to a question about reversing a 2019 ban on beauty filters despite recorded concerns about teen wellbeing from 18 experts, Zuckerberg said that there was a “high bar” for demonstrating harm, and called the limit “overbearing” and “paternalistic”. Beauty filters digitally alter a person’s appearance, and the company’s internal documents noted that the feature could increase body dysmorphia and other concerns among teens.