The Meta child addiction trial opening Tuesday in Oakland brings together more than half the states in the country against a single company, on the claim that Instagram and Facebook were engineered to hook young users and that Meta knew the consequences.

The jury trial in federal court is projected to run six to eight weeks. Jurors are expected to hear from Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg, Instagram head Adam Mosseri and Arturo Béjar, a former employee who became a whistleblower.

The Core Accusation

California Attorney General Rob Bonta framed the case in three parts: that Meta built a dangerous product aimed at young people, that it understood the danger, and that it then misrepresented that danger to children, families and the public.

Attorneys from California, Colorado, Kentucky and New Jersey will lead the proceedings, though all 29 participating states are parties through what is known as multidistrict litigation.

The complaint, filed in October 2023 and running 233 pages, alleges that Meta routinely gathers data on children under 13 without parental consent, in violation of both federal and state law. The states argue in filings that the company declines to abandon features it knows cause harm, and that its motivation is purely financial.

The Features Under Scrutiny

Central to the case is the claim that Meta developed and refined psychologically manipulative design elements to maximise the time users spend in its apps.

The specific mechanisms identified include:

• Infinite scrolling driven by recommendation algorithms
• Persistent notification alerts
• Thumbs-up “likes” and other engagement metrics
• Visual filters allowing users to alter their appearance

The states contend that adolescents are particularly susceptible to these features, and that heavy use correlates with rising rates of depression, anxiety, eating disorders and other mental health conditions.

Meta’s Own Research

Internal company research is expected to feature prominently. Among the material is a 2019 survey of 2,500 teenagers.

Its findings, according to the states, indicated that young people recognise Instagram can damage their mental health yet feel compelled to remain on it out of fear of missing cultural and social developments.

That combination — awareness of harm alongside an inability to disengage — is precisely the pattern the plaintiffs want jurors to associate with addiction rather than free choice.

What Meta Says

The company rejects the allegations entirely. In a public statement, Meta accused the states of abandoning the facts and the law in pursuit of an outlandish payout.

It described the claims as unsubstantiated and the financial demands as vastly disproportionate. The company argued that the attorneys general have produced no evidence that anyone in their states was actually misled, that they characterise harmless features — such as the ability to hold a second Instagram account — as sources of injury, and that they seek to punish Meta for challenges affecting the entire industry, such as age verification.

What Is at Stake

The financial exposure is substantial. The attorneys general say damages could reach $200 billion if Meta is found liable — roughly equivalent to the company’s 2025 annual revenue.

But money may not be the most consequential remedy sought. The states are also asking the court to require design changes making the products safer for children, an outcome with longer-lasting implications than any fine.

A Pattern of Losses

Meta arrives in Oakland with recent defeats behind it.

Two weeks ago, a judge ordered the company to pay $567 million to New Mexico in a comparable case, the second penalty imposed in that state and bringing its total obligation there to $942 million. A separate state trial in Tennessee is currently under way.

In California, thousands of coordinated cases have been filed against Meta, YouTube, TikTok and Snap. Meta and YouTube lost the first to reach trial in February, ordered to pay $6 million to the young woman who sued. TikTok and Snap settled beforehand. Two further cases scheduled for trial this summer — one federal, one in California state court — settled for undisclosed amounts.

Families, school districts and additional attorneys general have brought thousands of suits against social media companies in recent years, pursuing what amounts to a death-by-a-thousand-cuts strategy intended to force design changes.

Borrowing the Tobacco Playbook

The legal approach draws directly from the campaign against cigarette manufacturers in the 1990s, which centred on addictiveness and on internal knowledge of harm. That effort produced a $200 billion settlement in 1998 along with mandated changes to how cigarettes could be marketed.

Kentucky Attorney General Russell Coleman said the goal is to demonstrate that Meta concealed what it knew about the harm its products cause young people.

State attorneys general, he argued, are ideally positioned to accomplish this. They did it with tobacco in the 1990s and with the companies behind the opioid crisis, and he said they will do it again with Meta.

Why This Trial Matters

Previous verdicts have involved individual plaintiffs or single states. This one aggregates the enforcement power of 29 states before a single jury.

A verdict for the states would establish that platform design choices can carry legal liability for downstream mental health effects — a finding with implications reaching well beyond Meta. A verdict for the company would slow the momentum that has been building across dozens of courtrooms.

Either way, the six to eight weeks ahead will put Meta’s internal research, and the executives who acted on it, in front of a jury.