A high-stakes California trial is putting Meta’s business model under a harsh spotlight: did the company protect young users, or treat their attention as the product?

The case opened Tuesday in federal court in Oakland, where California, Colorado, Kentucky and New Jersey began seeking billions of dollars and sweeping changes to Facebook and Instagram. The states, part of a wider 29-state action filed in 2023, allege Meta knowingly designed addictive features for children, concealed harms and collected data from users under 13 without parental consent.¹

In opening arguments, California Deputy Attorney General Megan O’Neill told jurors Meta studied children’s vulnerabilities — their sensitivity to social feedback and still-developing impulse control — then built around them. She summarized the states’ accusation bluntly: Meta sought to “hook the users, hold them for as long as they can, harvest their data and hide the truth from the public.”¹

Outside the courthouse, parents and child-safety advocates carried photographs and a banner listing children they say died after social-media-related harms. Mary Rodee, whose 15-year-old son died by suicide after sextortion on Facebook Messenger, said the names were a demand for accountability, not merely a memorial.¹

Meta’s lawyer, Paul Schmidt, acknowledged that some under-13s lie about their ages, some teens struggle with time online, and harmful material exists on the platforms. But he framed the dispute as a clash over how to improve: “Much of this lawsuit is about the government attorneys and their witnesses saying in trying to improve, we’d do it a little differently.”¹

On Wednesday, former Meta engineering director Arturo Béjar sharpened the states’ case. He testified that Instagram took a “don’t ask, don’t tell” approach to children under 13, and that employee reviews and pay for product teams emphasized user growth and time spent online. “In that context, safety was an afterthought,” he said.²

Béjar said he found tens of thousands of underage Instagram users and argued Meta had “no goals, no metrics” for detecting suspected children. Meta rejects the allegations, saying its evidence will show a responsibility to work with teens and parents on safety.²

The six-week trial is expected to include testimony from CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Its central question is now stark: whether Meta’s safety measures were meaningful safeguards — or too little, too late.