Billionaire meta-CEO Mark Zuckerberg took the witness stand in the landmark social media addiction trial in Los Angeles on Wednesday and flatly denied giving company-wide instructions to limit “dwell time.” on Meta’s platforms or to attract children under 13 as users.
Under sharp questioning from plaintiff’s attorney Mark Lanier, who called him as a hostile witness, the Meta boss appeared visibly irritated at times, raising his eyebrows and fidgeting in his chair as he was confronted with a series of internal emails and presentation slides.
Lanier repeatedly interrupted him, citing time limits as the exchange became more tense.
Internal emails and “dwell time” goals
One such moment revolved around an internal company email that Zuckerberg sent in December 2015, in which he wrote: “What I hope we can achieve in 2016.” Zuckerberg said he hoped to increase user “dwell time” on company products by 12 percent over three years. Lanier asked if Zuckerberg could see a copy of the email in a folder in front of him. “Have you formulated that goal?” Lanier pressed.
“I think I wrote that email if that’s what you’re asking,” Zuckerberg replied. “And like I said, we used to have goals in that area, and at some point I decided to change that.” He emphasized that he later dropped “dwell time” targets in favor of “milestones” tied to delivering “added value” to users. He also suggested that the email was more of a brainstorming session than a binding requirement.
“I’m not sure if they were official targets or anything,” he said. “I wrote down my thoughts about what I hoped for.” Lanier didn’t accept that.
“Sir, you are the decision maker for your entire company,” he replied. “If there’s an email called ‘Company Goals’ and you say you want retention to increase 12 percent in three years and 10 percent in five years, don’t you think people interpret those as company goals?”
“I don’t know how that got condensed into corporate goals,” Zuckerberg replied, insisting that he no longer runs Meta that way.
Children under 13 and internal numbers
In another survey, he emphasized that Instagram’s terms of use have always excluded 13-year-old users and that you have to “agree to the terms when registering.” Lanier asked whether Zuckerberg really expects a nine-year-old to read the “fine print” and stick to it. The attorney also showed jurors an internal document showing that the company estimated in 2018 that four million Meta users were under the age of 13, representing about 30 percent of all 10- to 12-year-olds in the United States.
“I don’t understand why this is so complicated,” Zuckerberg replied in his first live child safety testimony before a jury. “It’s been our clear policy that anyone under the age of 13 is not allowed to use our services. We’ve been pretty consistent.” The company is taking “proactive steps” to identify and remove these users, “but we are not perfect.”
“I’m known to be very bad at it.”
For several hours on the witness stand, the 41-year-old tech titan played up his notoriously awkward persona. When asked if he had undergone extensive media training, he quipped, “I’ve done media over time, but I’m known to be very bad at it,” prompting subdued laughter in the room.
Asked about his estimated net worth of more than $200 billion, Zuckerberg volunteered: “It should perhaps be added that I have pledged to donate almost all of my money to charity.” He also stated that a “sensible company” would try to help users rather than harm them in order to keep its business healthy in the long term.
The trial in state court, now in its second week, centers on allegations that Instagram and YouTube acted as “digital casinos” by using addictive features to hook children and keep them scrolling despite known dangers.
KGM’s lawsuit
The plaintiff is a 20-year-old woman from California who is identified as KGM because she was a minor at the time of her alleged injuries. She claims design features of the platforms such as endless scrolling, autoplay and notifications left her hopelessly tied to Instagram and YouTube and caused her to suffer from anxiety, body image disorders, self-harm and suicidal thoughts.
Their lawsuit was selected as a so-called test case and will be the first of more than a thousand claims for damages to be heard in a coordinated, court-managed process designed to reduce the risk of contradictory decisions in later trials.
Meta and YouTube are the two remaining defendants after TikTok and Snap agreed to private settlements regarding their specific allegations. KGM was present in the courtroom during the first two hours of Zuckerberg’s testimony but left afterward.
Filters, experts and internal debates
In response to questions about so-called cosmetic filters that allow users to change features such as noses and lips, Zuckerberg said on Wednesday that Meta temporarily imposed a temporary ban on all filters before re-approving many of them unless they specifically promoted cosmetic surgery.
Confronted with evidence that 18 mental health experts had warned the company that such filters could harm teenage girls, Zuckerberg said the experts had “not presented any data that I found compelling.”
Asked about an internal message in which he expressed concerns about being “paternalistic” about banning the filters, Zuckerberg said he didn’t want to be “overly patronizing” about how people express themselves. Lanier replied that he was not concerned with the freedom of expression of a 12-year-old girl, but rather with why the concerns of 18 experts supposedly had less weight.
“I feel like you’re pretty distorting what I’m saying,” Zuckerberg responded.
Banners with photos and scientific studies
At one point, Lanier and his team unfurled a 35-foot-long banner containing thousands of photos, many of them filtered selfies, that KGM had posted on Instagram starting when she was nine years old. Zuckerberg said he reviewed some of the images before his testimony, but not “every single one.”
Under questioning from Meta’s attorney Paul Schmidt, Zuckerberg pointed to a National Academy of Sciences report that evaluated more than 800 studies and concluded that social media had not caused changes in youth mental health “at a population level.” The temporary ban shows that the company has taken the concerns seriously. He described a high standard of “proven harm” before restricting expression. “I generally want to lean more toward giving people the opportunity to express themselves,” he said.
When questioned again, Lanier pointed to an April 2020 email from Meta’s vice president of product design, Margaret Gould Stewart, who addressed Zuckerberg directly to oppose the reauthorization of many filters. “As a mother of two teenage girls… I can tell you that the pressure on her and her peers from social media regarding body image is enormous,” she wrote. “There will be no hard data proving causal harm for many years, if ever.”
“Problematic use” or “clinical addiction”?
Asked about the email, Zuckerberg said similar filters had long been available on other platforms and that “if there had been harm,” experts could have backed up their claims with evidence. He said he had looked into the issue “quite intensively” and that there had “clearly been a lot of discussion internally, with arguments on all sides”. In the end, he believes he took a balanced approach by not recommending cosmetic filters and not developing his own filters that promoted cosmetic surgery.
Zuckerberg co-founded Facebook in 2004. The company acquired Instagram in 2012 for about $1 billion and was renamed Meta Platforms in 2021. Last week, Instagram boss Adam Mosseri testified as the second witness in the sensational trial. Mosseri told jurors he believes there is “such a thing as using a social media platform beyond what feels good” but considers such behavior to be “problematic use” rather than a “clinical addiction.”
The psychiatrist Dr. Anna Lembke took a contrary view when she was called as the first witness in the closely followed trial. The medical director of Stanford University’s addiction medicine program and author of the best-selling book “Dopamine Nation” told jurors she believes social media poses the risk of clinical addiction because of “powerful” features like autoplay, notifications and “endless, bottomless scrolling.” The risk is highest in children because their brains are not yet fully developed and they lack impulse control.
“Instagram and YouTube offer 24/7, effectively unlimited, frictionless access to their products, with ineffective age verification and ineffective parental controls,” Lembke said. “It’s clear that parents largely don’t use them because they are difficult to navigate and children can get around them.”
Parents in the courtroom and rising suicide rates
At least a dozen grieving parents who say their children became addicted to social media before dying from suicide, drug overdoses or accidental asphyxia scrambled for courtroom seats in the face of stiff competition and a public lottery. When a court employee called out Tammy Rodriguez’s ticket number, the group in the hallway cheered. Rodriguez was among the first parents to file the lawsuit in 2022.
Her 11-year-old daughter Selena died by suicide on July 21, 2021, after she reportedly became so addicted to social media that she would run away from home or become violent when her devices were taken away or the battery died, according to Rodriguez. “We’ve thrown open the courtroom doors. It’s not about whether we win or lose, because we always lose kids… it’s about holding them accountable so they have to sit there and reveal their dirty secrets,” she previously told ROLLING STONE.
Co-plaintiff parents Brandy Roberts and Joann Bogard were also given seats and sat next to Rodriguez in the back row of the courtroom to watch Zuckerberg’s testimony.
Suicide rates are increasing
The role of technology in teenagers’ lives played a central role in the trial. Lawyers for Meta and YouTube argued in their opening arguments that the apps helped children combat loneliness, pursue creative expression and access educational resources. However, a recent Pew Research Center survey of American teens ages 13 to 17 found that 48 percent of teens say social media has a predominantly negative impact on people their age, up from 32 percent in 2022.
Alarmingly, suicide rates among young people ages 10 to 24 rose sharply between 2007 and 2021, increasing by 62 percent, according to the Centers for Disease Control. Previously, the suicide rate among young people remained stable between 2001 and 2007. Health experts, including Lembke and former Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, say teenagers are particularly vulnerable to social pressure, peer opinions and peer comparisons. Risky behavior also peaks in adolescence, and when young people are already vulnerable to addiction, the risks are greater.
