Meta Faces Landmark Trial Over Youth Safety on Its Platforms

California (GNP): Meta is set to face a jury trial beginning Tuesday that could pose the most significant threat yet to how Instagram and Facebook operate, following a series of prior court losses tied to allegations that the company’s platforms have targeted and harmed young users.

The trial stems from a lawsuit filed in 2023 by 30 US states, including California and New York, accusing Meta of numerous violations of federal and state privacy laws concerning children. The states are seeking more than $1 trillion in damages from the company, while also demanding sweeping operational changes to Instagram and Facebook, including an end to visible “like” counts and infinite scroll features. Should the states prevail in a case of this scale, it could force fundamental changes to how young people experience social media across the country.

Beyond ending like counts and infinite scroll, the states are pressing Meta to implement parental verification for teenage users, alter what they describe as dopamine-manipulating recommendation algorithms, and remove image filters that alter users’ appearance in photos.

Additional demands include ending autoplay of video content, prohibiting the creation of multiple accounts, and eliminating disappearing or ephemeral posts such as Instagram Stories. Each of these features currently sits at the core of the user experience on Meta’s platforms, and the states argue that they are deliberately designed to maximise time spent on the apps among users, including children and teenagers.

According to the states’ claims, Meta has also made it difficult for young users to reduce their platform use, pointing to frequent notifications intended to draw them back to the apps. The lawsuit alleges that by targeting child users in this way, Meta chose to exploit young people in order to grow its user base and expand its business, which today carries a stock market value of approximately $1.5 trillion.

Meta has consistently denied these allegations, with a company spokeswoman stating that the company strongly disagreed with the claims and remained confident the evidence would demonstrate its longstanding commitment to supporting young people.

The case is being heard by Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, a chief federal judge in California previously known for presiding over the high-profile Elon Musk v Sam Altman trial and recognised over nearly two decades on the bench for her direct and incisive approach. Her ruling in this case follows a related decision in New Mexico, where a judge fined Meta a collective $942 million and ordered changes closely resembling those now sought by the 30 states.

In that New Mexico ruling, Judge Bryan Biedscheid ordered Meta to eliminate like counts for users under 18 on Instagram and Facebook, ban the sending or receiving of nudity by teenagers on the platforms, and limit push notifications to certain hours of the day.

Biedscheid went further, declaring Meta a public nuisance, comparing the company to a polluting factory whose operations caused harmful effects across an entire population. Meta has said it intends to appeal the ruling. While that order applies only within New Mexico, a victory for the 30 states in their separate lawsuit would likely require Meta to implement similar changes nationwide, given that the states involved represent nearly two-thirds of the US population.

Any resulting changes would mark a substantial shift from the platform experience Meta has offered for years. Like counts, in particular, have existed since the company’s earliest days as Facebook, when it operated as a single platform, and remain today one of the primary ways users engage with content online. Despite their ubiquity, like counts are increasingly viewed as a driver of negative emotional outcomes, particularly among young users.

Also Read: US to Press Allies to Choose Sides in AI Race with China

Court testimony has illustrated this concern directly. Kaley, a young woman who prevailed in a separate lawsuit against Meta earlier this year, testified that she created dozens of accounts on YouTube and Instagram at age nine, using them to generate likes on her own posts in an effort to drive engagement and boost her sense of self-worth.

She said she began experiencing depression around that time and was formally diagnosed at age ten. Research conducted over recent years has similarly found that engagement metrics such as like counts can contribute to feelings of rejection and depression among teenagers.

As part of the states’ lawsuit, in which Meta has reportedly handed over more than two million internal documents, attorneys have cited the company’s own research showing that like counts drive social comparison, the tendency to measure one’s self-worth against images of others.

That internal research reportedly linked social comparison driven by Instagram to increased loneliness, worse body image, and negative mood. Judge Biedscheid referenced similar findings in his order, the first instance in which a social media company has been formally designated a public nuisance, stating that Meta’s platform operations had contributed to a growing youth mental health crisis in New Mexico and beyond. Attorneys representing the 30 states now suing Meta will seek to persuade Judge Gonzalez Rogers to reach a comparable conclusion.