On Wednesday, February 18, several years of legal wrangling finally gave way to a technology company CEO testifying under oath about social media addiction. The week before the lawsuit came to trial in Los Angeles Superior Court, two of the defendants, SnapChat and TikTok, settled out of court, relieving their CEOs of the requirement to testify.

Mark Zuckerberg, however, actually took the stand. The CEO of Meta, parent company to Instagram and Facebook, worked hard to make sure this moment never happened. The company has successfully defended all previous attempts to get Zuckerberg on the stand to answer questions about social media addiction.

Way back in April of 2024, Zuckerberg got himself removed from personal liability in a companion case moving through the courts. U.S. District Court Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers let Zuckerberg off the hook personally while allowing hundreds of consolidated cases against Meta to proceed. Every attempt to dismiss these lawsuits by Meta’s lawyers — along with Google’s lawyers and the others — failed to avoid this day of reckoning, where at last one CEO had to answer adversarial questions from plaintiffs’ attorneys.

The details in the hearing that Zuckerberg won, dismissing his personal liability in the case, are shocking. Records show that Zuckerberg personally insisted on going ahead with features his own designers told him could be harmful to children’s mental health. According to the lawsuit, Meta is guilty of:

[I]llegally enticing and then addicting millions of children to their platforms, damaging their mental health… including anxiety, depression, and occasionally suicide.

On the stand in Los Angeles, Zuckerberg was “testy,” according to NPR News correspondent Bobby Allyn, who attended the hearing. He accused attorney Mark Lanier of taking his words out of context and making it sound like he was saying something he wasn’t. However, many of the documents speak for themselves:

• In 2015, an internal document showed an estimated 30% of 10-12-year-olds in the U.S. using Instagram.

• In 2018, another internal document stated, “If we wanna win big with teens, we must bring them in as tweens.”

• In 2019 — seven years after Facebook purchased Instagram — Zuckerberg “reached out” to Apple, Inc. CEO Tim Cook, to discuss “the wellbeing of teens and kids.”

This last item looks like Zuckerberg and Cook conspired to continue damaging children rather than restrict underage usage. CNBC reports that the tech titans thought it was “too paternalistic” to crack down on kids. It wasn’t until late in 2019 that Facebook and Instagram added a required birthdate field to the account sign-up process.

Zuckerberg also allowed access to image-distorting “beauty filters,” even though he admits to seeing research from the University of Chicago showing the filters have negative effects, especially on young girls. The reason he gave the court? “Freedom of expression.” The rights outlined in the Constitution do not generally apply to minors, and the courts have consistently found that student speech can legally be suppressed.

Zuckerberg said the company had no desire to harm its own users and that it would not make business sense to do so. However, if the harm causes them to use your product excessively, a business case can be made. Meta had written goals to increase both the number of teens using their apps and the amount of time teens spent on the apps.

In one of the more disturbing moments of the trial, Judge Carolyn B. Kuhl warned the defense legal team that they must remove their smartglasses while in court. She informed them that audio and video recording was not allowed, and added:

If you have done that, you must delete that, or you will be held in contempt of the court. This is very serious.

The use of smartglasses to surreptitiously record audio and video of others is itself a tremendous source of privacy violation empowered by Meta. Leaked and distorted fragments of audio and video are all over social media platforms. They are an essential tool for cyberbullies and scam artists, as The Times of India reports:

In October, the University of San Francisco warned students about a man who reportedly approached women with inappropriate questions while recording these with Meta glasses and later posting the videos on social media.

To arrive at court wearing devices that are likely to become the next wave of privacy invasion and child abuse, to a trial over having intentionally designed products that cause mental harm to children, is perhaps the height of arrogance. Airtight age verification is the only thing that can save social media, and it will also likely destroy it. We’ll keep you posted every step of the way.

Written by Steve O’Keefe. First published March 3, 2026.

Sources:

“Zuckerberg takes stand in a landmark trial on youth social media addiction,” PBS News, February 18, 2026.

“Zuckerberg grilled about Meta’s strategy to target ‘teens’ and ‘tweens’,” NPR All Things Considered, February 18, 2026.

“What made judge very angry with executives who accompanied Mark Zuckerberg to court for social media trial,” Times of India, February 24, 2026.

“Mark Zuckerberg said he reached out to Apple CEO Tim Cook to discuss ‘wellbeing of teens and kids’,” CNBC, February 18, 2026.

“Social media companies must face youth addiction lawsuits, US judge rules,” Reuters, November 14, 2023.

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