Meta faces landmark trial over allegations it deliberately addicted children to social media

The trial began on a Tuesday morning in Oakland, in a federal courtroom where four state attorneys general are asking a jury to hold Meta accountable for what they say is a deliberate campaign to addict children to Facebook and Instagram. California, Colorado, Kentucky, and New Jersey are seeking damages that could theoretically reach $1.4 trillion, plus sweeping changes to how the company operates. This is the opening salvo in a much larger legal assault: 25 other states have similar cases waiting in the wings, and Meta faces additional lawsuits in state courts across the country.

The core accusation is straightforward and damning. Meta, the states argue, knew exactly how children's brains work—how they chase rewards, how they respond to social feedback, how they struggle to control impulses the way adults do. The company researched these vulnerabilities, the prosecutors say, and then deliberately built features designed to exploit them. One Meta study bore a title that captured the strategy plainly: "The young ones are the best ones." For Meta, the states contend, children are not users to be protected. They are the product to be harvested.

During opening statements, Megan O'Neill, a deputy attorney general for California, walked the jury through the company's alleged playbook. Meta knew that children under 13 were using its platforms despite age restrictions, she said, yet "failed to take the simplest most obvious steps to keep them off." When the company discovered someone was underage on Facebook, it would disable that account but leave their Instagram profile intact—a choice that seemed less like oversight and more like design. The states also accuse Meta of collecting data on children without parental consent, a violation of federal law.

Meta's defense rests on a different reading of the same facts. Paul Schmidt, the company's attorney, acknowledged what no one disputes: some children lie about their ages, some teens struggle with screen time, some people post harmful content. But he argued that research does not support the claim that social media damages adolescent well-being, and he rejected the addiction framing entirely. Meta, he said, has spent years building safety protections and sharing information with the public. The company believes it has a strong case.

The trial will likely run six to eight weeks. U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, who has overseen other high-profile tech cases including lawsuits against Elon Musk and Epic Games against Apple, is presiding. Legal experts say that even if Meta loses, a penalty anywhere close to $1.4 trillion is unlikely—but the court would have broad discretion to impose substantial damages and operational changes.

Outside the courthouse, the human weight of the case was impossible to ignore. Parents gathered holding photographs of their dead children. Mary Rodee was there, holding a banner she had helped write—a list of children who died from social media-related harms. The banner was several feet long. Since March alone, she said, they had added 39 new names to it. Her son Riley Basford was 15 when he died by suicide after being sextorted on Facebook Messenger. "Every name that I wrote on there is a promise that these children will never be forgotten," Rodee said, "and that their stories will force accountability where silence once reigned."

This trial is one piece of a much larger reckoning. Meta and other social media companies—YouTube, TikTok, Snap—face an avalanche of lawsuits alleging that their platforms are designed to addict young people, that they illegally harvest their data, and that they cause measurable harm. A federal appeals court recently denied Meta's attempt to block thousands of similar cases from proceeding. What happens in Oakland over the next two months will likely shape how courts treat these claims going forward, and whether the 25 states waiting in line will have a clearer path to their own trials.