Overview
- In six hours of sworn testimony, Mark Zuckerberg expressed regret over Instagram’s slow rollout of age checks for users under 13, citing birthdate collection starting in 2019, expansion in 2021, and verification efforts from 2022.
- He acknowledged setting a 2015 objective to boost average time on Instagram, then said teams later dropped time‑spent goals to focus on perceived user value.
- Plaintiff lawyers introduced internal estimates of millions of sub‑13 Instagram accounts and screen‑time “milestones,” which Zuckerberg argued were satisfaction indicators rather than growth targets.
- Meta highlighted parental controls and teen safety tools, as opposing counsel pointed to company data showing about 1.1% of teens used daily time limits and 2% used the “take a break” feature.
- Only Meta and YouTube remain as defendants after TikTok and Snapchat settled, with a 12‑person jury expected to decide by late March in Los Angeles and related federal and New Mexico cases proceeding separately.