Zuckerberg faces trial in teen addiction case

Billionaire Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, was questioned by a Los Angeles jury on Wednesday in a trial concerning allegations of addiction among young people to the company's social media platforms.

Zuckerberg denied a lawyer's claim that the company misled Congress about the design of its platforms, during questioning about his testimony before Congress in 2024, when he said that Meta did not set a goal for its teams to maximize the time users spent on its applications.

Mark Lanier, the lawyer for a young woman accusing Meta of harming her mental health as a child, presented emails from 2014 and 2015 indicating targets for increasing screen time by more than 10 percent. Zuckerberg responded that the company had previously had screen time targets but later changed its approach. He told the court, "If you're trying to prove that my testimony was inaccurate, I strongly disagree."

 This is the first time that the founder of Facebook has testified before a court and jury, in a case that could open the door to large financial compensations if Meta loses, and may also represent a new test of the legal defenses adopted by major technology companies in the face of claims of causing psychological harm to users, especially minors.

The lawsuit concerns a California woman who began using Meta's Instagram and Google's YouTube as a child and claims the platforms exacerbated her depression and suicidal thoughts. She accuses the companies of profiting from attracting children despite knowing the potential risks to their mental health.

Meta and Google  deny these claims, pointing to the addition of features designed to enhance user safety. Meta also cites assessments from the National Academy of Sciences stating that research has not established a direct causal link between social media use and the decline in children's mental health.

This case comes amid a global wave of measures and regulations regarding the impact of social media platforms on the mental health of minors. Australia has banned access to these platforms for those under 16, while other countries, including Spain, are considering similar restrictions.

In the United States, the state of Florida passed a law prohibiting the use of platforms by those under 14 years of age, while groups representing the technology sector are challenging the constitutionality of this law in court.