Overview
- Attorneys for Meta cross-examined former safety leader Arturo Béjar in Santa Fe, pressing him on his testimony about teen harms on Instagram.
- Béjar described his then-14-year-old daughter receiving explicit images and propositions within days of opening an account and said there was no option to report the first sexual message from a stranger.
- Béjar presented the 2021 BEEF survey of nearly 238,000 users ages 13–15, with results showing about one-third witnessed bullying, one in 10 experienced bullying, and one in five saw sexual images.
- Meta’s lawyers questioned how teens interpret survey questions and argued the platform cannot eliminate all harms, while Béjar defended the survey design and said his work was being taken out of context.
- Meta has publicly countered that it has strengthened protections for teens, citing private Teen Accounts, stricter messaging defaults, parental supervision tools, and streamlined reporting and blocking.