Kathmandu - Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has given a statement in Los Angeles Superior Court in California, USA, in a case related to addiction to social media platforms. A 20-year-old girl known as 'KGM' had filed a lawsuit claiming that she suffered from depression and even contemplated suicide due to excessive use of Facebook and Instagram at a young age.
The lawsuit accuses Meta and YouTube of deliberately designing the app to attract children and teenagers and increase 'engagement'. TikTok and Snapchat are said to have settled.
During the statement, Zuckerberg denied the claim that he deliberately targeted children. 'A significant number of users knowingly lie about their age,' Zuckerberg said during the statement, 'Enforcing age limits is a very difficult issue. Meta has tried to build different versions of the service that children can use safely.'
During the statement, the owner of Facebook and Instagram reiterated that those under the age of 13 are not allowed to use the platform. "Our goal is to provide useful services to users rather than increase the time they spend on the app," Zuckerberg said. "If users don't get a good experience from the app, why keep using it? And it's not in our business interest to give them a bad experience."
Zuckerberg suggested that Apple and Google app stores should build age verification systems into mobile sets to prevent children and teenagers from accessing apps. "We've been a little slow on age verification technology," he said. "We believe that social media users should be allowed to use filters to express their emotions, but we have made a balanced policy of not recommending beauty filters."
The plaintiffs in the case, however, said that internal documents presented at the hearing indicated that defendants Facebook and Instagram prioritized strategies to increase children's 'engagement', according to Reuters. The plaintiffs' lawyer, Mark Lanier, presented very aggressive and effective arguments in court. He introduced the 'ABC' (Addicting the Brains of Children) formula to understand the case. Which means a strategy to create addiction in children's brains.
'Just as cigarette companies knew that nicotine was addictive, these technology companies knew that their features were damaging to children's mental health,' argued attorney Lanier, 'Meta's own employees had already warned about the impact on children.' The debate over the design of the social network is currently underway in the County Superior Court in Los Angeles, USA. The court is examining whether the designs of such apps are legally 'addictive'. 
The hearing focuses on the central question of whether the social media app’s various features and algorithms directly harmed the plaintiffs. The plaintiffs’ lawyers presented internal conversations between top Meta executives to the jury as evidence. The conversations show a strategy to keep teenagers hooked on the app. While such a strategy was in place before, Zuckerberg claimed that the focus is now on the app’s usability and quality.
“If you’re trying to say that my previous parliamentary statement was inaccurate, I strongly disagree with that,” he told the court. Meta has presented measures such as default privacy settings for teen accounts and parental monitoring tools as evidence of its commitment to child safety. The case, a “bellwether trial,” was chosen as a representative case from a large number of similar cases filed. The decision in this case will set a precedent for more than 2,600 similar cases filed against social media companies. Technology experts predict that this could change the 'design architecture' or structure of social media. 
Similarly, Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, another defendant in the case, recently said in court that he disagreed with the concept that users can become 'clinically addicted' to social media. He said that he has been working hard to protect young people who use Instagram and that even if the company makes a profit in the future, it is not in their interest to make bad decisions for the well-being of users.
Outside the court, governments in various regions, including Europe and Asia, are engaged in a serious debate about the impact of social media on children. In Germany, Chancellor Friedrich Merz has made public the idea of ​​setting a mandatory age limit for users under the age of 16 on social media. He compared it to a risky situation, citing the fact that 14-year-olds in Germany spend an average of five and a half hours online every day, comparing it to a situation where children are given free rein to drink alcohol.
In France, the National Assembly, with the support of President Emmanuel Macron, has passed a bill to ban children under the age of 15 from using social media. It includes a proposal to make age verification systems mandatory. In India, a private member’s bill has also been introduced to ban children under 16 from opening or operating social media accounts. In India, the Prime Minister’s Chief Economic Advisor V. Ananth Nageswaran has also suggested the need for age-based limits and strict age verification systems.
Countries including the UK, Denmark, Greece and Spain are discussing age-based restrictions or controls for children. This signals a new phase in the global policy debate about the potentially harmful and addictive effects of social media on children and adolescents.