O'Neill said the states were not trying to put Meta, or social media, out of business.
"This case is not about whether social media has some benefits for some people. It does," she said.
But she said Meta exploited children for its own benefit, researching how children's brains work and react to online stimuli, and tracking every interaction that children had on its apps.
She showed jurors an internal email sent to Mosseri, which said "teen time spent" was the goal, and said Meta employees viewed Instagram as a "drug" and themselves as "pushers."
"Meta found the younger a kid is when they start using the app, the better," O'Neill said.
Schmidt acknowledged that employees might use "loose" language in private, but jurors would hear what the employee who called Instagram a drug then did to make it safer.
He also said Meta tries to develop tools to help struggling users, and flagged 1.4 million accounts over four years where it appeared users might be under 13.
Some critics of Meta spoke outside the courthouse as the trial began.
Among them was Mary Rodee, who said her 15-year-old son Riley Basford was victimized by a predator on Facebook before he died by suicide in 2021.
"They call it spontaneous suicide," she said. "I call it what it was, the predictable outcome of a system that protects corporations instead of children."
The lawsuit began in 2023, two years after whistleblower Frances Haugen testified to a U.S. Senate committee that Meta knew its products were unsafe for children and knew how to fix the problem, but did nothing in favor of pursuing higher profits.
In March, a Los Angeles jury ordered Meta and Google to pay $6 million to a 20-year-old woman who said she became addicted to Instagram and YouTube as a child.
Earlier this month, a New Mexico judge ordered Meta to pay $567 million to address teenagers' mental health after that state's attorney general called its platforms a public nuisance.
Tennessee is also in the midst of a trial against Meta, accusing it of disregarding internal research about Instagram's negative effects on teenagers.
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