Meta goes on trial in California over teenage addiction, in the largest consumer protection case in US history

A jury trial has begun in California against Meta — the company that owns Facebook and Instagram — in what is being described as the largest consumer protection case in American history, larger than the cases brought against the tobacco companies.

The suit, filed by 29 states in 2023, alleges that Meta deliberately designed features into Instagram and Facebook — likes, Stories, infinite scrolling, autoplay — that hook teenagers, and then misled the public about how safe the platforms were.

The shape of the trial

California, Colorado, Kentucky and New Jersey are the lead plaintiffs of the bipartisan group of 29 states. The trial opened on 18 August in a US federal court in California before District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, and is expected to run for six weeks.

Meta denies all of the allegations. The states are seeking roughly $200 billion, but penalties could reach $1.4 trillion — close to Meta’s own market capitalisation of about $1.5 trillion, which is why the figures being discussed have been called astronomical.

The verdicts that came before

New Mexico. A state court ordered Meta to pay $942 million and to overhaul its child protection systems. A jury had earlier set $375 million in civil penalties for violating the state’s consumer protection law.

Los Angeles. On 25 March 2026 a jury found both Meta and YouTube negligent and awarded a 20-year-old woman $6 million — $3 million compensatory and $3 million punitive, split $4.2 million from Meta and $1.8 million from YouTube. It was the first case of its kind to reach a verdict, and it stands to influence thousands of similar suits.

What other countries are doing

Whether to bar teenagers from social media is now in front of courts and parliaments in several countries.

• Australia — a full ban for children under 16.
• United Kingdom and Canada — moving down the same road.
• France — the Constitutional Council, the country’s top court, rejected a proposed ban on under-15s. It held that the law interfered disproportionately with freedom of expression, that it was too broad to account for each minor’s circumstances or the specific risks of each platform, and that the age verification it required raised privacy problems of its own.

What it means

CNN’s technology correspondent Clare Duffy argues that the case is aimed at the fundamental business model of social media — which will not be easy for the companies, though they have already made some straightforward changes on child safety.

The question is not a distant one for Assam either. On 18 August the state cabinet made it mandatory for coaching institutes to employ mental health professionals — that story is here. Both come back to the same question: who carries responsibility for the mental health of teenagers.