The long legal reckoning over social media and childhood is about to have its biggest day in court.
Meta goes on trial this week against a coalition of 29 US states that accuse it of deliberately engineering Facebook and Instagram to addict children, in what amounts to the most consequential test yet of a sprawling wave of youth-harm litigation.
The case opens in a federal courtroom in Oakland, California, before Chief Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, who is also presiding over Elon Musk’s suit against OpenAI.
Jury selection began on Wednesday, opening arguments are due on 18 August, and the trial is expected to run for about seven weeks, with the judge’s own decision likely in October. An advisory jury will weigh in on specific questions, yet the final ruling rests with her.
They argue that Meta knowingly built features to keep young users scrolling, from bottomless feeds to relentless notifications, that it harvested data on children under 13 in breach of federal privacy law, and that it assured parents its apps were safe while its own research suggested otherwise.
