Parents are upset as Zuckerberg appears in court: “It was deliberate addiction
Grieving parents waited for Mark Zuckerberg to arrive at a courthouse in downtown Los Angeles in what is being called the social media industry’s “big tobacco moment”.
“I take comfort in the fact that he’s here alone, with just his lawyers and the jury. He’s without his lobbyists or his PR machine,” says Lori Schott, whose 18-year-old daughter Annalee was addicted to social media and died by suicide in 2020.
She adds, “If we had been in this court 10 years ago, she would still be alive.”
‘They knew what they were doing.’
Lori tells me how Annalee, whom she describes as the central cog of her family, grew up on a farm in rural Colorado, but social media addiction overshadowed her interest in rodeo and horses.
Lori says, on TikTok and Instagram, she used beauty filters and compared herself to other girls. Annalee’s anxiety and depression increased and she even watched a live suicide video online.
“They [the social media companies] knew what they were doing,” Lori says. They did this for profit and it has to stop. Our children deserve to have control over their own digital footprint.
“My daughter should not have been bombarded with content telling her she was ugly or that her life had no future. It was an addiction by design; metrics were set on increased use. Some call it capitalism; I call it murder.”
Zuckerberg reaches court for social media trial
Lowry argues that social media platforms are inherently addictive and have caused many personal harms due to their addictive nature.
The same allegation is being made by the plaintiff in the case, a 20-year-old who is referred to in court as “Cali GM”.
She became an Instagram user at the age of nine and is addicted to multiple social media platforms. Her lawyers say Kelly GM suffered from negative body images, anxiety, and depression.
TikTok and Snapchat have both reached settlements in the lawsuit, leaving Meta and Google as the remaining defendants.
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zuckerberg draws a crowd.
The Cali GM lawsuit is the first of nine separate trials in Los Angeles by nine different plaintiffs who claim they became addicted to social media when they were minors and suffered varying harms.
Mr Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, which owns and operates Facebook and Instagram, was appearing before a jury for the first time to answer allegations that he put profits over the health and well-being of children.
He arrived at the court accompanied by bodyguards and sat nervously while waiting to present his case. When he testified, plaintiff KGM was sitting directly in his line of sight, but he never looked at him. He nodded to the 12 jurors as he walked toward the box.
Interest in the case is so high that the court held a “lottery” to determine who would “win” a seat in the public gallery to see Mr Zuckerberg. Raffle tickets were taken out and even some bereaved parents who had come here from across the country for this watershed test were not allowed in the room.
Zuckerberg in court – as it happened
Zuckerberg bristled at suggestions that his platforms were designed to harm children. Photo: Reuters
The plaintiffs’ attorney, Mark Lanier, focused on Instagram’s stated policy of not allowing people under the age of 13 on the platform.
Mr Lanier argued that Instagram not only knew there were users under the age of 13, but the company aggressively sought to recruit them to the platform.
On three screens inside the courtroom, they displayed an internal META memo from 2018.
It says, “If we want to win big with teens, we have to get them on board as kids.” “We’ve definitely established tweens as the highest retention age group in America.”
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However, Mr. Zuckerberg voiced his outrage at the notion that Instagram’s design could potentially harm children.
“My focus is on building a sustainable community,” he said. “If you do something that’s not good for people, maybe they’ll waste more time [on Instagram] in the short term, but if they’re not happy with it, they won’t use it over time. “I’m not trying to maximise the amount of time people spend each month.”
He argued with Mr Lanier and repeatedly accused him of misrepresenting his testimony on the stand and previous statements he made to Congress. There was no “gotcha” moment with Mr. Zuckerberg and there is still plenty of testimony to come.
But if the plaintiff is successful in this case, thousands more similar cases may come to light. This could bring drastic changes to the way the social media industry operates.
