Instagram monitored rising teen engagement while targeting young users, lawyers claim

Instagram tracked how much time people spent in its app, with company leadership highlighting yearly “milestones” tied to engagement growth. According to documents revealed during CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s testimony in a state court case heard in Los Angeles County Superior Court in February, average daily time spent on the app increased from 40 minutes a day in 2023 to 46 minutes a day in 2026.

That emphasis on time-spent data has become a central issue in the lawsuit, which is one of the rare occasions on which Zuckerberg has appeared before a jury.

In K.G.M. v. Platforms et al., now being heard in L.A. County Superior Court, jurors are being asked to decide whether social media companies can be held responsible for youth mental health harms allegedly caused by their platforms or by addictive product design. Snap and TikTok reached settlements before the trial began, but executives from the remaining defendants, Meta and YouTube, are still giving testimony as part of the proceedings.

The plaintiff in the case is a 19-year-old woman identified by the initials K.G.M., or “Kaley,” who says that using social media from a young age damaged her mental health, contributed to an addiction to the technology, and led to depression, including suicidal thoughts.

Meta denies that Instagram is to blame for Kaley’s struggles.

“The question for the jury in Los Angeles is whether Instagram was a substantial factor in the plaintiff’s mental health struggles. The evidence will show she faced many significant, difficult challenges well before she ever used social media,” Meta spokesperson Stephanie Otway said in an emailed statement about the case.

Lawyers representing the plaintiffs are trying to show that Meta internally set objectives aimed at increasing the amount of time users spent on Instagram, even while knowing that minors were present on the platform. During Zuckerberg’s testimony, attorneys pressed him on why he told Congress in 2024 that children under 13 were not permitted on Instagram, even though internal company records showed Meta knew there were roughly 4 million children under 13 using the app as early as 2015. The same document stated that those children represented 30% of all 10- to 12-year-olds in the United States.

Zuckerberg resisted that line of questioning, saying he had answered honestly before Congress by citing the company’s official policy, and added that Instagram removed underage users whenever it identified them. He also tried to distinguish between the “milestones” the company tracked and specific “goals” that Instagram teams were expected to hit.

Still, other documents cited by the plaintiffs’ legal team during his testimony pointed to Instagram’s increasing interest in the tween and teen audience. Emails written by a former product manager reportedly went so far as to say, “Our overall company goal is total teen time spent,” and that “Mark has decided that the top priority for the company in the first half of 2017 is teens.” Another market analysis from December 2018 also found that tweens were the “highest retention age group” in the United States, suggesting that the company saw that demographic as especially valuable.

A separate email written by Zuckerberg adviser Nick Clegg, who left the company last year, reportedly stated that Instagram’s age requirements were effectively “unenforceable.”

The plaintiffs’ lawyers argued that, although Instagram knew underage users were on the platform, it did not begin taking meaningful action to address the issue until August 2021, when it started requiring users to enter their birthdays. Meta responded that it had already begun asking new users for their ages at sign-up in 2019.

Although Instagram has more recently introduced a series of teen safety protections and parental control tools, the company’s focus on younger users has not disappeared. Other internal documents referenced during the testimony indicated that Meta’s current objective is for Instagram to become the largest teen destination by monthly active users in both the United States and globally this year.

If you or someone you know is thinking about suicide or needs someone to talk to, support is available. Call or text 988 to reach the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline.