(TNND) — Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg took the stand Wednesday in a civil trial that could blaze the trail for thousands of other court cases on the alleged harms of social media.
The trial in Los Angeles County Superior Court focuses on a now 20-year-old woman, identified by the initials KGM, who claims she became addicted to social media as a kid, which fueled her depression and suicidal thoughts.
The trial started last week and is expected to last about eight weeks, according to The Associated Press.
Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, and YouTube, owned by Google, are named in the lawsuit.
Former defendants TikTok and Snap settled.
Plaintiff attorney Mark Lanier recently told CNN that built-in features with the social media apps are designed to be addictive to young users.
Lanier compared the addictive powers of social media to those of drugs.
“The companies did this, and they did this for money,” Lanier told CNN. “That’s our allegation.”
During his testimony, Zuckerberg fielded questions about Meta’s age verification policies, pushed back on the idea that he’s coached in how to respond to safety concerns, told Lanier he disagreed with his characterization of the facts, and said “a reasonable company should try to help the people that use its services,” according to AP reporting.
Neama Rahmani, a former federal prosecutor and the president of West Coast Trial Lawyers, told The National News Desk late last month that this “bellwether trial” could easily go either way and will feature a battle of the experts weighing in on social media and mental health.
“One of the big issues in this case is going to be causation,” Rahmani said. “We know, obviously, mental health is a big issue for teenagers. But was it caused by these tech companies, these social media apps, or was it something else entirely? It could be their family, it could be their friends, school, obviously. There are a lot of factors at play here.”
Andrew Selepak, an expert on social media who teaches at the University of Florida, told TNND on Wednesday that this trial is being described by many as social media’s “Big Tobacco moment.”
But Selepak said there’s a difference. Proving that social media is a primary cause of mental health problems or destructive behaviors is a more difficult task than proving tobacco causes cancer, he said.
But Selepak said there’s no question that social media is addictive, and not just for kids.
“I mean, they’re addictive for you, addictive for me, addictive for my parents, who are in their 70s and 80s,” Selepak said. “The platforms simply are addictive. They’re intentionally designed to be that way, so you stay on the platform consuming content, consuming advertising.”
Photo illustration by Ezra Acayan/Getty Images
Instagram prohibits users under 13, and KGM reportedly started using it at age 9.
Selepak said Zuckerberg and other social media executives will likely try to stick to their talking points during the trial, pointing to teen accounts and other safeguards they’ve implemented.
But Selepak said these companies have a hard time keeping young users off their platforms, describing the effort as putting up a “10-foot fence” to keep out a bunch of people with “11-foot ladders.”
The Pew Research Center found that a majority of teens use YouTube, TikTok, Instagram and Snapchat.
Despite a growing recognition from young people of social media’s potential harms, use of the top platforms has remained steady.
Selepak said whistleblowers and internal documents that plaintiffs say prove the companies knew about the addictive qualities and risks to children might have a bigger impact on the outcome of the trial than Zuckerberg’s testimony.
But Selepak said Zuckerberg, with all his wealth, might not come across as a sympathetic figure to jurors.
And he said jurors will wrestle with their own biases and experiences with social media in forming a judgment.
A Meta spokesperson provided TNND with a company statement on the trial, saying the “evidence will show (the plaintiff) faced many significant, difficult challenges well before she ever used social media.”
The company also said it “strongly” disagreed with the allegations made by this and other lawsuits.
“For over a decade, we’ve listened to parents, worked with experts and law enforcement, and conducted in-depth research to understand the issues that matter most,” the statement reads. “We use these insights to make meaningful changes—like introducing Teen Accounts with built-in protections and providing parents with tools to manage their teens’ experiences. We’re proud of the progress we’ve made, and we’re always working to do better.”
Common Sense Media, which advocates for online protections for children and teens, said a raft of research shows that excessive social media use is linked to a host of mental health issues, like depression, anxiety and eating disorders.
Common Sense Media called the trial and Zuckerberg’s testimony “a remarkable moment in the years-long effort to make the internet safer and healthier for kids.”
“Social media giants wouldn’t be on trial if they had been proactive about protecting kids in the first place,” Common Sense Media CEO Jim Steyer said in a statement. “For too long, they’ve used our kids and society at large as guinea pigs for massive, uncontrolled experiments. But now, company executives are on trial for their decision to conduct that experiment.”
Lanier, in his CNN interview, said the platforms’ designs, not just the third-party content hosted on the sites, could be responsible for the alleged harms.
He said social media companies can take additional steps to protect young users, including more robust age restrictions and a time-out feature to stop “doomscrolling.”
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