Los Angeles, 19 February (H.S.): Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg endured a protracted courtroom interrogation on Wednesday, in Los Angeles Superior Court, where attorneys for a plaintiff alleging Instagram addiction probed his stewardship of the platform's impact on vulnerable adolescents amid a high-stakes trial scrutinizing social media's role in youth mental health crises.
The testimony, unfolding in a bellwether case poised to influence thousands of analogous suits against Meta and YouTube, centered on whether Instagram's algorithmic feeds and features deliberately foster compulsive engagement, exacerbating depression and suicidal ideation in users like plaintiff KGM, now 20, who attributes her turmoil to early immersion in the app.
Zuckerberg parried queries on addiction semantics, averring that utility—not habituation—drives retention, while conceding past internal metrics tied to usage time before a deliberate pivot; he invoked his philanthropic pledges and media coaching critiques, dismissing them as benign feedback rather than scripted artifice.
Plaintiff's counsel Mark Lanier juxtaposed Zuckerberg's prior congressional avowals against documents suggesting engagement quotas, elicited admissions on age verification protocols barring under-13s via detection algorithms, and framed ethical trilemmas—aid, ignore, or exploit—prompting the CEO's endorsement of supportive corporate conduct.
Zuckerberg sidestepped direct liability for harms cited by bereaved parents in attendance, reiterating Meta's youth safety investments despite mockery of his public demeanor and historical profuse perspiration episodes.
Meta rebuts claims, attributing KGM's struggles to familial strife documented in records, with Instagram head Adam Mosseri previously denying clinical addiction while decrying profit-harm dissonances; the trial, alongside parallel New Mexico proceedings, underscores escalating judicial scrutiny of infinite-scroll mechanics and cosmetic filters as addictive vectors.
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Hindusthan Samachar / Jun Sarkar
