She alleges that Meta built features into Instagram designed to keep young users hooked on the service. YouTube said in its opening statement that it was not a social media company and that its features were not designed to be addictive. Zuckerberg said the company had introduced “proactive tools” to identify and remove such accounts but acknowledged the difficulty of the task. “There are a set of people — potentially a meaningful number of people — who lie about their age,” he told the court. In a statement to the Los Angeles Times, a Meta spokesperson said: “The question for the jury in Los Angeles is whether Instagram was a substantial factor in the plaintiff’s mental health struggles.

Source: The Telegraph February 20, 2026 02:17 UTC