A federal courtroom in Oakland, California is now the site of the biggest legal test yet of whether Big Tech can be held responsible for how it designs apps for teenagers. Meta is on trial against a coalition of 29 state attorneys general — led by California, Colorado, Kentucky, and New Jersey as “bellwether” states — over claims that Facebook and Instagram were deliberately engineered to be addictive to minors. Opening statements began August 18 in front of Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, and the trial is now in its second of an expected six weeks.
What the States Are Trying to Prove
The states argue Meta built specific features — infinite scroll, algorithmic feeds, push notifications, and Instagram Reels — to maximize time-on-app for young users, knowing the design choices carried mental-health risks. The complaint links that design to anxiety, depression, and in some cases suicide among teen users, and separately alleges Meta collected data from under-13 users without parental consent, a potential violation of federal children’s privacy law (COPPA). It’s a product-liability case dressed as a tech story: the states aren’t arguing Meta said something wrong, they’re arguing Meta built something harmful.
What’s Already Come Out in Week One
Testimony so far has been pointed. A former Meta engineering director told the court that Mark Zuckerberg consistently prioritized growth and engagement metrics over proposed safety changes for younger users. Psychologist Jean Twenge, known for research linking smartphone adoption around 2010 to a documented decline in teen mental health, also testified for the states. Zuckerberg and Instagram head Adam Mosseri are both named on the states’ witness list, though as of this week neither has a confirmed date to take the stand.
The Legal Stakes — Bigger Than a Fine
The states are seeking civil penalties reported as high as $1.4 trillion, but that figure is the ceiling of what’s being asked for, not a verdict — read it as leverage, not a preview of the outcome. The part that should worry Meta more is the requested relief beyond money: a court order forcing product changes, including age restrictions, eliminating infinite scroll and certain notification types for minors, and deleting AI models that were trained on children’s data. A key procedural detail made this trial possible at all — a federal appeals court already ruled that Meta, Google, TikTok, and Snap can’t hide behind Section 230 to dodge addictive-design claims, clearing the way for states to argue this as a product-safety case instead of a speech case.
Why Meta Is Fighting This One
Most of Meta’s peers have chosen not to test that argument in front of a jury. TikTok settled its youth-addiction lawsuits in January 2026, with additional confidential settlements reached with teen plaintiffs as recently as this month. Snap settled a comparable Florida case on the eve of trial. Meta going to trial instead — as the first bellwether case in a much larger wave that includes roughly 3,300 related cases in California courts alone, plus another 2,600-plus in a federal multidistrict litigation — suggests the company sees this outcome as consequential enough to fight rather than negotiate away quietly. It’s part of a pattern that stretches well beyond the U.S.: our look at Europe’s crackdown on Instagram’s addictive design covers a parallel regulatory push aimed at the same features now on trial in Oakland.
What’s Next
The trial is expected to run into October, after which Judge Gonzalez Rogers will rule on the bellwether states’ claims — the remaining roughly 25 states in the coalition have their own cases queued up to follow. Nothing here changes how Instagram or Facebook work today, but a ruling that forces design changes for minors would be one of the most consequential outcomes tech regulation has produced in years, regardless of the final penalty number. It also lands in the middle of a broader reckoning over how tech products treat young users — see our coverage of OpenAI’s new age-gated ChatGPT for Teens for how another major AI company is trying to get ahead of the same scrutiny, and our breakdown of the EU’s new AI Act transparency rules for where regulators are headed next.
Sources: NPR, CNBC, Al Jazeera, and NBC News.
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