Meta teen addiction trial: Instagram head says few teens knew safety tools; States to explore settlement

Meta is being accused by 29 US states for deliberately designing Instagram and Facebook to be addictive to teenagers. To defend its case, Instagram chief Adam Mosseri took stand during which he stated that many are unaware of platform’s safety tools. He talked about platform’s “Take a Break” feature that reminds users to stop using the app after a certain amount of time on it, as per Reuters.

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Mosseri denies addiction claims

According to Mosseri, very few teenagers were using this feature on their own before Instagram made it automatically enabled by default. However, US states are arguing that the feature should be enabled by default, and that it should be rolled out much earlier. Mosseri denied the accusation and rejected claims that Instagram intentionally stalled the rollout.

“Most teens didn't want it,” Mosseri said. “We decided to push forward with it anyway.” He also talked about the 2021 Facebook Files leak, when former Meta employee Frances Haugen made internal documents public. Haugen alleged that Meta knew some of its products could be harmful to children but failed to address it.

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Mosseri said he wanted safety research to be reliable and backed by experts before it became public, and that he did not encourage employees to hide any potential risks to teenagers. Now, the trail will continue with more testimony from Mosseri today, August 26.

Meta and states explore settlement

According to a Bloomberg report, Meta and US state attorneys general are discussing a potential settlement in a case. As of now, Meta and the attorneys general of California, Colorado, Kentucky and New Jersey had not made any public commented on the settlement discussions.

However, Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford's office said its press conference would announce “a major consumer protection settlement involving a leading technology company.”