Meta faces youth addiction reckoning as Oakland trial opens

Opening arguments begin Tuesday in Oakland federal court as California, Colorado, Kentucky and New Jersey press Meta Platforms over claims it designed Facebook and Instagram to hook young users and misled the public about safety. Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers will hear the consumer-protection claims while 29 states pursue Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act allegations that Meta collected data from users under 13 without proper consent.

The eight-member jury is advisory only. Rogers keeps the final word on liability and any remedies after a trial expected to run six to seven weeks. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Instagram chief Adam Mosseri are expected to testify.

Four states lead the consumer claims

The case grows out of a 2023 multistate lawsuit filed after a joint investigation that officials said found serious harms to children and teens. California Attorney General Rob Bonta, Colorado’s Phil Weiser, Kentucky’s Russell Coleman and New Jersey’s Jennifer Davenport are trying the consumer-protection portion.

In a Bonta statement laying out the case the day before openings, the California AG said Meta “designed Facebook and Instagram to keep kids on the platforms longer and longer, to the point of physical and mental harm.” Weiser added that Meta knew the platforms could harm young people yet kept practices that sacrificed sleep and school focus “because more time online meant more money for Meta.”

Coleman cast the fight in historical terms: “AGs are in the perfect position to get this done. We did it with the Tobacco Settlement in the 1990s. We did it with the companies behind the opioid crisis. We’ll do it again with Meta.” Davenport said New Jersey had co-led the investigation since 2021 and would show Meta “endangered the mental health of an entire generation of kids, with addictive features it knew would have these horrific effects.”

The states point to features such as infinite scroll, constant notifications, algorithmic recommendations and the ease of multiple accounts. They allege Meta knew children under 13 used the apps yet still collected their data.

Those four threads form a single consumer-protection theory: design choices that prolong use, public statements that understate risk, and data practices that ignore age gates. The lead AGs will try to tie each feature to a concrete harm the jury can weigh, then leave Rogers to translate any findings into liability and relief.

Prior verdicts already went against Meta

Juries and a judge have already ruled against the company this year in related matters. Meta has said it will appeal those outcomes. Another loss here would supply a federal template that thousands of pending suits could cite.

In March a New Mexico jury found Meta liable for consumer-protection violations tied to child safety and ordered the maximum $5,000 per violation, totaling $375 million. In August a state judge added $567 million for youth mental-health programs and ordered platform changes lasting five years, producing the New Mexico $942 million judgment and reforms. The day after the first New Mexico verdict, a Los Angeles jury found Meta and YouTube negligent over addictive design features in a private suit brought by a young woman, awarding $3 million compensatory and $3 million punitive damages.

A federal appeals court last week dismissed Meta’s bid to pause this trial and related litigation, clearing the path after Rogers’s earlier refusal to dismiss the child safety suit.

Taken together, the state jury finding, the later reform order, and the private negligence verdict give plaintiffs a ready set of exhibits on liability theories and damage ranges. Meta’s appeal posture means none of those outcomes is final, yet each still shapes settlement leverage and trial themes in Oakland.

Legal costs hit $2.4 billion in one quarter

Meta is not short of cash, yet the bill is rising fast. In its second-quarter results the company reported $2.40 billion of charges related to legal proceedings alongside $1.18 billion in severance from a May headcount cut. Total costs and expenses jumped 55 percent year over year. Cash and marketable securities still stood at $90.26 billion at quarter-end, and Reality Labs continues to post large losses of its own, including the recent stretch of Reality Labs still posting multi-billion quarterly losses.

• $2.40 billion, Q2 2026 legal-proceedings charges
• $942 million, New Mexico total exposure so far
• $1.4 trillion, Meta’s high-end estimate of states’ penalty math (disputed)
• 3,000+, federal youth-harm suits centralized before the same judge

CFO commentary warned that youth-related trials scheduled this year “may ultimately result in a material loss.” Markets have already priced some of the risk; Meta shares softened into the openings as traders weighed both cash awards and forced product changes.

The cash pile cushions one-time hits. Forced redesigns do not reverse as cleanly. That split between payable judgments and lasting product orders is why investors watch the injunction requests as closely as the penalty math.

An advisory jury leaves the final call with the judge

Rogers empaneled an eight-member advisory jury, a rare device. The panel will answer specific questions she selects. She remains free to accept, modify or ignore those answers when she issues findings on the state claims and the COPPA counts. The structure keeps control with the bench while still giving the public a jury voice on contested facts.

Audio from the trial will stream on the Northern District of California’s YouTube channel. That transparency raises the political temperature around any eventual order.

Because the jury is advisory, openings and closings matter twice: once to persuade the panel on the questions it will answer, and again to build a record Rogers can adopt or reject. Meta and the states will draft proposed findings with that dual audience in mind.

The product changes the states actually want

Money grabs headlines. The injunction requests may matter more for how the apps work. The four lead states want a nationwide order that would force Meta to:

• Implement stronger age restrictions and verification
• Eliminate infinite scroll
• Delete algorithms and AI models trained on children’s data
• End or sharply limit push notifications for minors, including overnight cutoffs
• Set strict time limits for young users
• Alter ranking to prioritize well-being over pure engagement
• Default stronger privacy settings and hide public like counts for minors
• Fund education and compliance reporting

Those demands track many of the reforms already ordered in New Mexico, only applied nationally. Legal observers note that judicial dictates about core features can pose an existential operational threat even if the cash award lands far below Meta’s $1.4 trillion caricature. Santa Clara University’s Eric Goldman called big damage awards plus feature orders potential “existential threats to social media defendants.”

A national order on ranking, notifications, and age gates would reach far beyond one state’s users. Compliance teams would have to rebuild defaults, retrain models, and document the changes for the court, work that outlasts any single damages check.

COPPA counts and the penalty math fight

Twenty-nine states allege Meta violated COPPA by knowingly allowing under-13 users and collecting their data without verifiable parental consent. States can enforce COPPA. The FTC’s own guidance states a court can hold operators liable for civil penalties of up to $53,088 per violation, with the amount turning on egregiousness, number of children, data type and company size.

Meta told the court the four states’ calculation method, counting teenage users and multiplying by months of heavy use, could reach $1.4 trillion, near the company’s market capitalization. It called the figure outlandish. Rogers has labeled that top number unreasonable while also rejecting Meta’s own $4 million estimate as too low. The gap itself will be litigated as hard as the underlying conduct.

• Up to $53,088 per violation under FTC COPPA guidance
• $1.4 trillion high-end figure Meta attributes to the states’ method
• $4 million Meta’s own estimate, rejected by Rogers as too low
• Unreasonable, Rogers’s label for the top-end number

The State AGs may call this a landmark case, but their limited claims are unsubstantiated and their financial demands are vastly disproportionate. The AGs offer no proof anyone in their states was misled, claim benign features like having an additional Instagram account somehow harmed their residents, and attempt to penalize Meta for industry-wide challenges like age verification. Rather than sticking to the facts or the law, the states have instead decided to chase an outlandish payout. We stand by our record of creating strong protections for teens, and look forward to making our case in court.

A Meta spokesperson provided that statement to multiple outlets including Engadget ahead of trial. The company argues “social media addiction” is not a recognized psychiatric diagnosis and that it has invested in teen tools, parental controls and research. It says the states are punishing industry-wide age-verification problems rather than proven deception specific to its apps.

How Rogers defines a single “violation” will drive any COPPA number more than the headline per-violation cap. Count each child, each month, or each data type and the totals diverge by orders of magnitude, which is why both sides treat the multiplier fight as its own trial within the trial.

How the Probe Grew Into This Trial

The path from early investigation to this courtroom runs through several public markers already in the record. A short timeline shows how the pieces stacked up.

1. 2021 – Frances Haugen’s disclosures help spark multistate scrutiny; New Jersey begins co-leading the joint investigation.
2. 2023 – Officials file the multistate lawsuit after the joint probe that they said found serious harms to children and teens.
3. February – Zuckerberg testifies in the Los Angeles private case, describing Instagram as meant to be “useful,” not addictive.
4. March – A New Mexico jury finds Meta liable and sets $375 million in civil penalties at the maximum per violation.
5. Day after that verdict – A Los Angeles jury awards $6 million total against Meta and YouTube in the private addiction suit.
6. August – A New Mexico judge adds $567 million and five-year platform reforms, bringing that judgment to $942 million.
7. Last week – A federal appeals court refuses Meta’s bid to pause this trial and related cases, clearing the Oakland path.
8. Tuesday – Opening arguments begin before Rogers and the advisory jury.

Each step narrowed Meta’s options for delay and widened the set of adverse findings plaintiffs can wave at the bench. The company still contests every premise, yet the sequence leaves little procedural slack once openings start.

Why a Federal Finding Would Travel Widely

More than 3,000 federal youth-harm suits already sit centralized before Rogers, with another large state-court cluster in Los Angeles. A reasoned federal decision on consumer-protection or COPPA lines would not bind every court, but it would hand later plaintiffs a detailed map of which features, which knowledge claims, and which remedy forms survived scrutiny here.

The New Mexico judgment already pairs cash with multi-year reforms. Oakland’s states seek a nationwide version of that pairing. If Rogers adopts even part of that package, defense counsel in the centralized docket will face the same playbook repeated at scale.

Meta enters denying the core premises and ready to litigate every multiplier. Plaintiffs enter with recent jury language, a large state judgment, and a public that a recent Reuters/Ipsos poll found largely convinced social media can hook children. The advisory answers and the written findings will decide how far that alignment moves the law.

Zuckerberg’s prior testimony and what comes next in the room

Zuckerberg testified in the Los Angeles private case in February and described Instagram as meant to be “useful,” not addictive. Mosseri has also appeared. Both are expected again. Their presence turns product-design debates into live examination of internal research, ranking goals and safety trade-offs that have circulated since Frances Haugen’s 2021 disclosures helped spark the multistate probe.

A recent Reuters/Ipsos poll found 85 percent of Americans believe social media can be addictive for children and 61 percent want firmer oversight of the companies. That public backdrop sits behind every jury question Rogers puts to the advisory panel.

Whatever Rogers ultimately writes will land against a backdrop of more than 3,000 federal suits already centralized before her and another large state-court cluster in Los Angeles. A finding that core engagement features crossed consumer-protection or COPPA lines, paired with any durable injunction, would give plaintiffs nationwide a stronger playbook and force Meta to rebuild how its youngest users encounter the feed. The company enters the room denying the core premises and ready to litigate every multiplier. Openings start today.