Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is all set to testify in a watershed, unprecedented trial, where he will answer the jury's questions on whether the Meta Platforms are deliberately addicting children and harming them.
The case pertains to a 20-year-old woman, identified now by the initials KGM, who has claimed that her early social media use left her addicted to technology and compounded her depression and suicidal thoughts.
The other defendants in the case, TikTok and Snap, have already settled, while Zuckerberg's Meta and Google's YouTube are the remaining defendants in the case.
The Meta CEO will not only testify, but is also expected to answer some tough questions in the presence of the jury and the family of the woman.
This is not the first time, however, that Zuckerberg will testify. He has earlier answered questions to Congress about youth safety on his company's platforms, and has apologised to families whose lives have been tragedies, they believed, were caused by social media usage.
The current case, including KGM, along with two other cases, has been selected as a bellwether case, which means the outcome of this case can impact how thousands of other lawsuits against social media companies will pan out.
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Meta remains firm about its “commitment to supporting young people,” and has said that it strongly disagrees with the allegations in the lawsuit. “We are not denying that KGM experienced mental health, issues but the allegations that Instagram played a substantial factor in those struggles,” one of Meta's attorneys, Paul Schmidt, said in his opening address.
He said that the woman had a turbulent home life, and she turned to social media platforms as a coping mechanism or a means of escaping her mental health struggles.
Earlier, head of Meta's Instagram, Adam Mosseri, told the jury that he does not believe people can be clinically addicted to social media platforms.
“It is not good for the company, over the long run, to make decisions that profit for us but are poor for people's well-being,” Mosseri testified.
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