What happens when the features millions of young people use every day become the subject of a trillion-dollar legal fight?
The feed that never ends, the notification that pulls you back in, the algorithm that decides what comes next have become so familiar they barely register anymore. On Wednesday, a federal court in Oakland, California, was asked whether a company can be held legally accountable for building those features for young users.
Twenty-nine state attorneys general are going to trial against Meta Platforms in a case where potential damages could reach $1.4 trillion, approaching the company’s market capitalization of $1.5 trillion. Jury selection began Wednesday, with opening statements scheduled for August 18, and a ruling expected in October after a seven-week proceeding.
The case targets Instagram and Facebook directly, not for what users post on them, but for how the platforms were designed. What separates this trial from anything before it is the scale of what the states are seeking: not only financial penalties, but court-ordered changes to how these platforms work for young users.
What the States Are Actually Seeking
Beyond any dollar figure, the 29 states in this coalition want courts to force changes to the products young people use every day.
Colorado, Kentucky, California, and New Jersey are leading the consumer protection claims, alleging that Meta designed its platforms to keep young users hooked and misled consumers about their safety. All 29 states also allege that Meta illegally collected and used children’s data in violation of federal law.
The remedies they are requesting reach directly into the mechanics of Instagram and Facebook. They include age restrictions on users, eliminating infinite scroll and push notifications, deleting all algorithms and AI models built with children’s data, changing the content recommendation system to prioritize well-being over engagement, and strict time limits for younger users, among many other changes.
The attorneys general have not publicly disclosed how much money they may seek. The $1.4 trillion figure comes from Meta’s own estimate of its maximum potential exposure.
A Trial Structured Around a Rare Choice
The judge overseeing this case made a procedural decision that is almost never seen in federal court.
U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, who also presided over Elon Musk’s lawsuit against OpenAI, will preside over the proceedings and issue the final ruling. She made the unusual decision to seat an advisory jury, a panel that is “very rarely used.”
The panel will return verdicts on specific questions Rogers has selected, but she may disregard its findings entirely. The jury therefore has a defined role in the proceeding without making the final call on the case.
Mark Zuckerberg and Instagram head Adam Mosseri are both expected to testify. A Reuters/Ipsos poll found that 85% of Americans believe social media can be addictive for children, and 61% said the companies need firmer oversight.
Five Years in the Making
The lawsuit grew from a series of disclosures that shifted how state officials assessed the harm these platforms were causing.
Frances Haugen, a former Facebook product manager, testified before a U.S. Senate committee in 2021 that the company knew its products could harm young users and how to make them safer, but chose not to make those changes in favor of higher profits. Her testimony and the documents she disclosed prompted a coordinated multistate investigation into Instagram and Facebook’s impact on young users.
That investigation ultimately led to the federal lawsuit filed in 2023. The disclosures that had first drawn scrutiny in Washington were now part of a legal fight involving states across the country.
Meta has broadly denied the allegations and said it has worked to protect children on its platforms. A company spokesperson said: “We’ve listened to parents, worked with experts and law enforcement, and conducted in-depth research to understand the issues that matter most.”
A Legal Theory Built Around Design
The states’ legal theory rests not on what users post, but on how these products were built to pull them back in.
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Federal law generally protects online platforms from liability for content their users generate. The state attorneys general built their case around that legal boundary by focusing on design choices: infinite scroll, push notifications, and the recommendation algorithms that decide what appears in a user’s feed.
That theory produced results in March 2026, when a Los Angeles jury found Meta negligent in product design and failure to warn. The jury awarded $3 million in damages to the plaintiff who alleged she had become addicted to YouTube and Instagram because of how they were built.
The federal case before Judge Rogers applies that argument at a far larger scale. With potential remedies affecting how the platforms operate across the country, it is the biggest test yet of youth social media litigation.
A Run of Adverse Rulings
Meta arrived at this trial having absorbed a string of significant legal setbacks.
Days before proceedings opened, a New Mexico judge ordered the company to pay $567 million and make changes to its platforms after finding it responsible for fueling a children’s mental health crisis in the state. On Monday, a federal appeals court dismissed Meta’s effort to delay the trial and halt thousands of related lawsuits, ruling the appeal had been brought too early.
Two prior cases that went to juries each produced verdicts against the company. Meta also settled a Kentucky school-district lawsuit that had been scheduled for trial in June, later agreeing to pay $9 million as part of approximately $27 million in settlements reached by the defendants. The agreements included no admission of liability and required no platform changes.
More than 3,000 lawsuits against Meta, Snap, YouTube parent Alphabet, and TikTok parent ByteDance are centralized before Judge Rogers in federal court. An additional 3,300-plus individual claims are pending in Los Angeles state court.
What Meta Is Arguing, and What Comes Next
Meta is pushing back on the states’ core framing, and a legal scholar who studies high-tech law says the potential consequences could be existential for social media defendants.
The company has reportedly argued it could not have misled consumers about addiction because “social media addiction” is not a recognized psychiatric condition. Meta has also said the flood of litigation could seriously impact its business and financial results.
New Jersey Attorney General Jennifer Davenport reportedly said in a statement: “Meta knows its platforms are harming children and teens but continues to keep kids addicted, as we’ve alleged in our lawsuit.” She added: “Our kids are not data points to be monetized.”
Eric Goldman, a professor and co-director of the High Tech Law Institute at Santa Clara University School of Law, said that “big damage awards and judicial dictates about features both potentially pose existential threats to social media defendants.” When 33 state attorneys general originally filed this lawsuit in 2023, Colorado’s Phil Weiser drew an explicit parallel to multistate litigation against the tobacco and opioid industries.
The parallel is structural: a coalition of state attorneys general alleging that a major industry understated harms while pursuing profit and seeking both financial penalties and changes to business practices. The legal theories and available remedies differ significantly from those earlier fights, but state officials and legal commentators have noted the same coordinated pattern.
How do you think social media platforms should be held responsible for the way they are designed, and what would meaningful change actually look like for younger users?
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