The eyes of the nation—and the tech world—are fixed on a federal courthouse in Oakland this week as Meta Platforms goes to trial over accusations that it designed Facebook and Instagram to hook children and then lied about the dangers. Opening arguments begin Tuesday in a case co-led by California Attorney General Rob Bonta, part of a sprawling multidistrict litigation involving 29 state attorneys general. The jury was seated last week in the courtroom of U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, and the trial is expected to last about six weeks.
The stakes are staggering. The four states actually arguing the case—California, Colorado, Kentucky, and New Jersey—are seeking penalties and product changes that Meta itself has estimated could reach $1.4 trillion. State lawyers, however, told the judge last week that a more realistic figure is $200 billion. Either way, industry experts are already comparing this to the ‘Big Tobacco’ moment for social media, with Meta cast as the industry’s centerpiece.
At the heart of the lawsuit is a simple but explosive allegation: Meta deliberately deployed features like infinite scroll, autoplay, beauty filters, and engagement-optimized algorithms to maximize the time young users spend on its platforms—knowing full well the harm that could cause. The states argue that Meta’s business model, which relies on advertising revenue, incentivized the company to keep kids scrolling, often at the expense of their sleep, education, and mental health. New Jersey Attorney General Jennifer Davenport put it bluntly in an interview with NPR: ‘They’re putting the profits over the health of a generation of young people.’
Meta has denied the claims, calling them unsubstantiated and the financial demands ‘vastly disproportionate.’ In a statement, the company said the attorneys general ‘offer no proof anyone in their states was misled’ and accused them of trying to penalize Meta for ‘industry-wide challenges like age verification.’ Meta also pointed to its investments in safety features, including ‘teen accounts,’ and its record of removing child exploitation content.
The trial follows a string of legal setbacks for Meta. In March, a Los Angeles jury found both Meta and Google‘s YouTube liable for designing addictive products that harmed a young user, awarding $6 million in damages. That same month, a New Mexico jury ruled against Meta for misleading users about safety and concealing child sexual exploitation on its platforms, leading to a $375 million fine—later followed by a court order for an additional $567 million in an abatement fund, bringing Meta’s total liability in that state to $942 million.
New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez, fresh off that victory, told CNBC that the potential consequences for Meta in California could be ‘astronomical.’ He noted that New Mexico has only about two million people, while California, with its vast population and status as Meta’s home state, could deliver a ‘market-shifting’ blow. Torrez is not stopping there: he’s now drafting two new bills with state lawmakers to strengthen consumer protections and child safety online, and his office is also preparing a lawsuit against an unnamed AI company over a chatbot that children form emotional bonds with.
The legal theory in these cases is carefully designed to sidestep Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which historically shielded tech companies from liability for third-party content. Instead, plaintiffs are focusing on Meta’s own design choices—alleging that features like the ‘like’ button and infinite scroll are not speech but deliberately manipulative tools. Stanford law professor Nora Freeman Engstrom says the litigation is already changing public perception. ‘The significance of this litigation isn’t limited to who wins or how much Meta pays,’ she said. ‘The litigation itself can substantially change what the public knows.’
For the states, the remedies they’re seeking go far beyond financial penalties. They want the court to force Meta to delete personal data it collected from children under 13, along with the algorithms trained on that data. They’re also asking for an end to certain addictive design features, including infinite scroll and autoplay. But some experts are skeptical about how effective such injunctions would be. Duke law professor Stuart Benjamin pointed out that separating addictive design from addictive content could prove difficult. ‘Can the claims you’re letting go forward be disentangled from the claims you’re saying can’t go forward?’ he asked.
Judge Rogers, who also presided over the high-profile case Elon Musk brought against OpenAI, will have the final say on any injunctive relief. Meta has already indicated it will appeal any adverse ruling, and legal experts expect the case could ultimately reach the Supreme Court. For now, the trial is set to expose internal Meta communications that plaintiffs say reveal a gap between public assurances and private knowledge. In a pretrial ruling, Rogers cited Meta’s own documents as supporting the theory that time-restriction tools were a ‘public relations stunt.’
As the courtroom drama unfolds, analysts are watching nervously from Wall Street. Meta’s stock is down 11% this year, though most of that decline has been tied to massive AI infrastructure spending rather than legal fears. But Torrez believes the market is underestimating the danger. ‘The analysts aren’t pricing this correctly right now,’ he said. ‘That California judgment by itself could be gargantuan enough that it changes the ability of this company to do what it needs to finance into the future.’
Whatever the outcome, this trial marks a pivotal moment in the effort to hold social media companies accountable for their impact on young people. As Torrez put it, the New Mexico case provided a blueprint—and now California is the stage where the future of Meta’s design choices could be decided.
