An attorney for Meta countered that the company has been transparent about the risks teens face on Instagram and the amount of dangerous content that it finds. The company works hard to find problems and fix them, he said.
The lawsuit, filed by Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti's office, seeks financial penalties and a court order directing Instagram to modify aspects of the platform that the state says are harmful to teens' mental health.
If the jury finds the company liable, the trial will enter a second phase before Chancellor Russell Perkins, the judge overseeing the trial, who will decide whether to order the company to pay financial penalties and make changes to Instagram to make it safer for teens.
During the opening statements, which Reuters watched on Courtroom View Network, Tom Cartmell, a lawyer for the state, played the familiar dinging sound of a notification hitting a smartphone. Unpredictable rewards like notifications trigger dopamine hits that promote addiction, which has a particularly strong impact on the brains of kids, Cartmell said.
Meta understood the brain science behind why teens find its platform so irresistible, Cartmell said.
Cartmell showed the jury an internal document from 2017 in which Meta product managers wrote that features like notifications and infinite scroll “are inherently at odds with well-being” and said that the company needed to warn the public.
“This warning never came,” Cartmell said.
Kevin Huff, a lawyer for Meta, said documents like those Cartmell cited are proof that the company is searching for problems on its platforms, so it can improve them.
The company has developed tools to help limit problematic use of Instagram, and seeks to empower teachers and parents to help keep teens safe, Huff said.
Huff urged jurors to consider whether Meta should bear sole responsibility for societal problems such as suicide, child exploitation and addiction. "We think the evidence will show that Meta is doing its part and empowering others to do their part, because protecting teens online is a shared responsibility. It takes a village."
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