Zuckerberg denies targeting teens; court presents his 'bring them in as tweens' memo

Highlights

• Mark Zuckerberg denied Meta targeted children on Facebook and Instagram despite internal documents suggesting teens were a key priority .
• A 20-year-old woman known as KGM claims she started using Instagram aged nine and became addicted.
• The case has been compared to the Big Tobacco trials of the 1990s, with hundreds of families and schools suing Meta, Google, TikTok and Snapchat.

However, Zuckerberg faced a series of uncomfortable confrontations as the claimant's lawyer, Mark Lanier, presented internal company documents that appeared to tell a very different story.

Damaging documents emerge

One internal Instagram presentation shown to the court read "If we want to win big with teens, we must bring them in as tweens." A 2017 executive email stated plainly that "Mark has decided the top priority for the company is teens."

Separately, emails from 2014 and 2015 showed Zuckerberg himself setting targets to increase time spent on the app by double-digit percentages, directly contradicting his 2024 congressional testimony.

Zuckerberg pushed back against each piece of evidence, saying his earlier remarks to Congress were accurate and that Lanier was "mischaracterising" his words.

He acknowledged Meta previously used time-spent goals but said the company had since changed its approach.

Human cost highlighted

Central to the trial is the case of KGM, a 20-year-old who claims she began using YouTube at six and Instagram at nine, developing a serious addiction that damaged her mental health.

Lanier dramatically unfurled a large banner of thousands of selfies KGM had posted during her adolescence, asking Zuckerberg directly: "You expect a nine-year-old to read all of the fine print?"

Before the trial began, both TikTok and Snapchat settled for undisclosed amounts. Meta continues to deny the lawsuits fairly represent its commitment to child safety, pointing to measures such as teen accounts with stricter privacy settings and content limits.