- Mark Zuckerberg called enforcing Instagram's age limits a "challenging" problem in court
- He acknowledged Meta uses tools to detect under-13 users but many lie about their age
- Internal Meta documents showed focus on attracting teens despite safety concerns
Mark Zuckerberg testified that it's “very difficult” to enforce Instagram's age limits as he sought to defend the platform during a landmark trial over social media addiction.
The chief executive officer of Meta Platforms Inc. was sharply questioned on the witness stand Wednesday about the company's efforts to attract and engage teenage users, and whether it adequately policed accounts belonging to children under 13, despite rules barring them from using the app.
Zuckerberg said Meta has introduced some “proactive tools” to try to identify and remove accounts used by children under 13, but called it a “challenging” problem.
“There are a set of people — potentially a meaningful number of people — that lie about their age,” Zuckerberg told the jury in Los Angeles Superior Court
The Facebook founder, the world's fifth richest person, is the second executive to testify during the trial, which started Feb. 9, and centers on Kaley G.M., a 20-year-old woman who blames Meta's Instagram and Google's YouTube for her years of mental health struggles.
Zuckerberg said there have been debates at Meta about “privacy sensitivity” related to asking individuals for their date of birth in order to create an account, something the company ultimately decided to do.
“I think we got to the right place over time,” he said. “I always wish we could have gotten there sooner.”
Photo Credit: Bloomberg
Kaley, who is also identified in court documents by her initials K.G.M., was present in court for a portion of Zuckerberg's testimony. She has been absent for much of the trial so far after her lawyer Mark Lanier told jurors it would be traumatic for her to sit through it.
Zuckerberg, dressed in a dark blue suit and gray tie, at times appeared visibly uncomfortable and frustrated, particularly when Lanier suggested that Meta's goals were focused on maximizing time spent on its apps.
Lanier, pointing to Kaley, told Zuckerberg that she had an Instagram account when she was nine years old — a time during which the company was seeking to increase the amount of time users spent on its platforms, the plaintiff's lawyer said, referencing internal company documents.
“You expect the nine-year-old to read all of the fine print?” Lanier said.
Lanier presented a series of emails, slides and internal messages from Meta employees spanning several years that suggested the company saw the young demographic as key to its platforms' long-term success. The documents presented a nuanced and in-depth understanding of how to reach different age groups, spanning from pre-teens, or “tweens,” to older teenagers.
The documents also showed that some Meta employees had concerns about company policies surrounding childrens' safety. Lanier pointed Zuckerberg to an email from Nick Clegg, who was then Meta's top policy executive, stating that age limits were unenforced, making it “difficult to claim we are doing all we can.”
Meta has long argued that age verification should happen before a user downloads an app — meaning that Apple Inc. and Alphabet Inc.'s Google, which control the world's most dominant mobile operating systems and app stores, should be responsible for age-gating certain experiences.
Zuckerberg testified on Wednesday that several companies lack reliable ways to a verify young user's age, particularly children without a driver's license. He argued that phonemakers should bear more of that responsibility.
Meta, Apple and Google have all lobbied in various US states to get ahead of potential legislation that could determine which companies are ultimately responsible for this type of user protection.
The trial, which is expected to run through the end of March, will serve as a critical test for thousands of other lawsuits that target not only Meta and Google, but also TikTok Inc. and Snap Inc. The latter two companies aren't participating in the current case because they reached confidential settlements with the woman's lawyers at the Seattle-based Social Media Victims Law Center shortly before trial.
While the four social media giants have denied wrongdoing and maintain they have installed robust guardrails for young users, they face billions of dollars in potential damages if juries side against them in early trials.
Photo Credit: Bloomberg
Other documents made public in 2021 by an employee-turned-whistleblower showed that Meta also faced declining teen usage on Facebook, its core network, forcing employees to strategize about how to “optimize” its networks for young people. In recent years it has made attracting young adults to Facebook a key focus, tweaking its algorithms to surface more content from outside a user's network of friends and family — a strategy popularized by TikTok.
Zuckerberg testified that while it's true Meta wants teens to use its services, they aren't a meaningful revenue driver for the company. Teens account for just 1% of the company's revenue, he said, which is almost entirely from advertising.
“Most teens don't have that much disposable income,” Zuckerberg said. “In terms of our business, I don't think it's a meaningful thing in the near term.”
Snap Chief Executive Officer Evan Spiegel said something similar on Snap's earnings call earlier this month.
Meta has been criticized for years for allegedly failing to protect young people online. Internal documents unveiled in 2021 found that employees were aware that Instagram could have negative effects on teens, especially girls. During a Federal Trade Commission antitrust trial in Washington last year, other internal documents showed that Instagram's automated software systems recommended that child “groomers” connect with minors on the app.
Zuckerberg has previously had to defend his company before Congress. In January 2024, during a congressional hearing over youth safety on social networks, Zuckerberg stood up and apologized to families of children who were victims of sexual exploitation on social media platforms.
The company has made efforts of late to improve its privacy settings for teen users. It debuted so-called teen accounts in late 2024 that automatically restrict content and some interactions on Instagram for kids under 18. It also changed the default content settings on Instagram in October to what it described as “PG-13” for all users under 18, and now restricts some younger teens from streaming live on Instagram.
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